Worried About My Natural Gas Bill After the Coldpocalypse

[Rodnok1]

Originally Posted by Egnalf

Try burning oil....

I love an oil burning Furnace, here only ran me a couple hundred for heat the whole winter.
I have contemplated swapping an oil Furnace in here.

[ZipZap]

Originally Posted by snide

You could switch to propane. But if you have electric heat now, might be way to expensive to switch the heating system in your house.

Do it!

[JRD77VET]

Originally Posted by Egnalf

Try burning oil....

That's what I have. Oil fired hot air system ( with central AC for the summer). Plus we have a coal/ wood insert for the fireplace and a propane unit in the addition. Propane range in the kitchen for cooking.

The Franco Belge gravity feed oil burner is in the basement. That unit guarantees we always have heat. The forced air system only comes on when needed. We currently have a coal fire going in the Harman insert.

I also purchase my oil when the price is good. I have four tanks totally 1100 gallons which would last almost two heating seasons. I usually use about 550 to 600 gallons a season.

[MadInNc]

Originally Posted by Rodnok1

I love an oil burning Furnace, here only ran me a couple hundred for heat the whole winter.
I have contemplated swapping an oil Furnace in here.

Can ya even buy oil down here? Propane locally here is from $4.40 to $3.31 per gallon my son says

[Rodnok1]

Originally Posted by MadInNc

Can ya even buy oil down here? Propane locally here is from $4.40 to $3.31 per gallon my son says

Oh yes plenty of oil companies deliver. I had propane stove, dryer and water heater at last place but the massive uptick in propane prices one year made me keep the oil Furnace(they triple the propane price).
Propane isn't regulated so they charge whatever they want. I wouldn't have a propane Furnace. Up north it ran a friend 600 a month for propane for his Furnace one year.
Electric heat pump cheaper than propane to run, how screwed up is that.
I wish I had NG here...

[MadInNc]

Originally Posted by Rodnok1

Oh yes plenty of oil companies deliver. I had propane stove, dryer and water heater at last place but the massive uptick in propane prices one year made me keep the oil Furnace(they triple the propane price).
Propane isn't regulated so they charge whatever they want. I wouldn't have a propane Furnace. Up north it ran a friend 600 a month for propane for his Furnace one year.
Electric heat pump cheaper than propane to run, how screwed up is that.
I wish I had NG here...

My son has Prop, last fill was over $4 gal as posted here...

NG was cheap but in the last month and Yr over Yr $ went up ~25% and they blame weather.... right

New joint is Elec only. Total bill ~$250 so maybe I’ll just get tankless heater and whole house gen on NG.

Summer will kill me planning on $450 w pool heat/ cool and all

Ehhh. Only one or other, never win

[Rodnok1]

Don't know how NG can be up, i thought there was a suplus and prices at damn near all time low last year, could be wrong however.
450 a month for electric... Ouch. Might be worth looking at higher efficiency equipment at that rate.
FIL found out at zero the heat pump doesn't work and emergency electric strips run 24/7 couple years ago. Think his bill was close to 1k. He has a large solar array also but unfortunately between the extreme cold and snow it produced little.

[snide]

Originally Posted by Mike Mercury

our current home is one of those "all electric" types. We do not have natural gas available.

Over the years I've installed a few propane units;

* a ceramic log fireplace which is capable of heating almost the entire house

* a whole house generator

* greenhouse heater (small unit)

* shop heater

I went from using a pair of tanks (that are replaced by the propane provider when needed), to a "pig" tank (an upright standing 120 gallon refillable tank), to now a buried 250 gallon tank.

At my house in Cow Hampshire, I had a 1000 gallon "submarine".

[Aerovette]

I used 132 CCF on my last bill. I will guestimate I used 4 times that with this cold snap and burning the gas fireplace 24/7. Last month's bill was 89.56. This month $360.00 if I'm lucky.

[Rodnok1]

Originally Posted by snide

At my house in Cow Hampshire, I had a 1000 gallon "submarine".

At 4 bucks... I don't want that bill.

[snide]

Originally Posted by Rodnok1

At 4 bucks... I don't want that bill.

I didn't want that either!

The shitty thing about propane, generally, is that you don't own the tank. The propane company does. And every customer has a different rate. You want a cheaper rate, you switch companies. But they don't like it when you do that every time you need propane.

[Torqaholic]

Originally Posted by Rodnok1

Don't know how NG can be up, i thought there was a suplus and prices at damn near all time low last year, could be wrong however.
450 a month for electric... Ouch. Might be worth looking at higher efficiency equipment at that rate.
FIL found out at zero the heat pump doesn't work and emergency electric strips run 24/7 couple years ago. Think his bill was close to 1k. He has a large solar array also but unfortunately between the extreme cold and snow it produced little.

About 80% of that $280 bill I got this month was electric. This 800w computer running 24/7 is responsible for most of that. In any case libs are trying to shut down natural gas to cram their electric green energy down our throats. Politics is the biggest cause of pricing fluctuations where that's concerned IMO.

[Stangkiller]

Originally Posted by thecornerman

I saw that on the news, how does that work?

Our powergrid is privatized. So in normal operations where supply outpaces demand the price per kw drops to as low as a penny so some of the more expensive powerplants may go offline or roll back production. As power demands exceed supply, they bump up the spot rate all the way up to the state regulated 9.99 per kw.

Most folks pay for an agreed upon fixed rate for a period of time, which in turn their provider buys the contracts from powerplants, ect. Griddy does the spot rate. So when the times are good, they're paying a penny and i'm contracted at 9cents per kw...but then again I'm sheltered from the $9.99kw rates.

[Aerovette]

My average charge is 10.4 cents per kwh. At my office, it hit the $9.00 per kwh mark and three generators were put in place and the power in the building killed to stop the cash bleed. The generators ran space heaters strewn throughout the building, wifi, and computers. It was actually WARMER then than it was today with the "real" power on. The keep the damn thermostats at 66 in the winter. Space heaters just run run run and it was toasty.