Frugal Living: Put On A Sweater
Just this past weekend we had a little furnace incident in our home. To recap, when we woke up Saturday morning, the house was hovering right at about 60 degrees and it turned out that our 15 year old furnace had blown out a motherboard and also had a motor casing facing an imminent demise. We still haven’t decided what to do after a scheduling conflict put off our meeting with our HVAC guy, but the whole incident and a news story in the Wall Street Journal made me chuckle for one simple reason:
I’ll bet I could have gotten away with our home being at 60 degrees for a few days if I’d really wanted to.
This isn’t a statement about the intelligence of the other residences of our home, just a statement of how they’ve been trained to do something I’ll bet we all heard when we were little …“Put on a sweater!!”
Remember that? I have to admit, I had forgotten that particular entry in the “things I’ll never say to my kids when I’m a grown up” log until a few years ago when one of my boys trotted downstairs in the dead of winter to tell me that it was too cold in the house and to ask if we could please turn on the fireplace while wearing - I kid you not - one pair of white cotton briefs and nothing else. An unstoppable verbal response came vaulting out of my mouth before I could stop myself as I told him to get upstairs and get some damned clothes on, and that was the beginning of my adult assault on the thermometer.
Why does this matter? Well, because it’s October and it’s getting chilly, but also because of the aforementioned article in the Wall Street Journal …
The U.S. government’s top energy forecaster Tuesday said homeowners can expect to pay more to heat their homes this winter, though the agency added it may revise its forecasts lower as the growing financial crisis rocks the global economy.
The Energy Information Administration said that consumers will pay a projected $1,137 to heat their homes from Oct. 1 to March 31. That figure represents a 15% increase over last year’s estimated average heating outlay of $986. The forecast comes at a difficult time for U.S. homeowners, who face rising unemployment, a drop in home values and worries about the nation’s economic future as the credit crunch reshapes the financial sector. Rising energy prices have also become a key concern for presidential candidates.
The EIA — the U.S. Department of Energy’s statistical arm — said homes that use heating oil and natural gas will see the sharpest increase in costs because of colder weather and higher fuel prices compared with a year ago. Consumers using propane and electricity for heating will see increases, as well.
A 15% increase, eh? You want to know what I have to say to that? Plenty!
- Put on 15% more clothes.
- Go to your local home improvement store and get plastic sheeting to put over drafty windows.
- Change the filter on your furnace.
- Turn down the thermostat - but be sly. A degree a week or so, just to see if anyone notices.
- Invest in an adjustable thermostat to lower the temperature during times when nobody is home or at night when everyone’s wrapped in blankets.
- Open the blinds on the south side of the house during the day. Consider heavy insulated curtains on the north side of the house to help block drafts and keep in heat.
- Close the doors to rooms you don’t use (guest rooms) and close their vents.
- Turn off the heater if you’re leaving for more than a couple of days, as long as there is no chance that doing so will leave you with frozen pipes.
- Wrap your water heater, and turn it down to 120 degrees.
- Lay off the long hot showers. It’s a waste of water and the energy to heat the water is probably feeding off your furnace.
Bring it on, power companies - we’re ready for you! Raise our prices 15%? No problem, we’ll just drop our demand by at LEAST that much. So there.
