What was your heating bill?

[clover]

I turned on the AC for the first time yesterday. Despite wanting to hold out as long as possible, I'm 39 weeks pregnant and it was 88 degrees. Open windows were just not cutting it.

It got me thinking about a favorite OHW topic: What was your winter heating bill? I was blown away by others' answers until we moved into our home - and experienced a $4200 propane bill that first winter. And yes, that was just 4-5 months of propane. I live in 1860s brick Italianate farmhouse in the Midwest with a large addition added in 1970. We had little to no insulation in the addition (apparently no one cared about energy bills in the 70s) and the original house had 40 year old aluminum storms over the original windows. Our first winter we lived in just the addition and closed off the old house, yet still saw that $4k+ bill. By the next winter we were using a few rooms in the old house, but we'd also added brand new custom storms to the original windows. Our bill dropped by about 1k.

We now use the entire house, and while there's lots of insulating still to do, our propane bill has stayed close to $3k. In fact, we did not take delivery of all of the propane that we prepaid this year. It was a nice problem to have. The bill is still much higher than we'd like it, but we expect it to continue to drop as the remaining windows are restored. It is amazing what a little insulation (and hours and hours of window restoration) can do. Oh, and the square footage for the entire home is somewhere around 3400.

So now that warm weather has arrived, what was your heating bill?

[shazapple]

Our main source of heat is a geothermal heat pump, so at worst our electrical bill was $350 (February) and at best it is $80 (June), so no complaints from me! Of course, we also use about $250 of propane over the winter and a couple cords of wood. Our house is about 2000sqft.

[NY Linda]

I've only been in my house for two winters. The first year, I kept my thermostat at 55 and wore a lot of extra clothes. My worst bill was around $400. This past winter, I upped the temp to 60 when I was cold, and my bills didn't change all that much. I'm in upstate NY, and my house has beautiful leaky windows (this summer's project) with very ugly old aluminum storms (hopefully next year's project) and very little insulation. First year's gas/electricity was about $2000 for 12 months - not too bad!

My house is about 3000sq. ft, and has two gas furnaces. Instead of breaking it by upstairs/down, it's front house/back. This actually works well for me as bedroom/living room are in front so I can keep that part of the house a little warmer. The kitchen heats up when cooking and it heats the rooms above too.

[CS in Low Hud]

Our worst monthly gas bill this winter was $317. We heated from November to the end of April here in lower NY state. That was a bit later than I typically like to stop heating, but we had a chilly spring. Our house is slightly over 2000 SQ/f. We have blown-in cellulose insulation in our walls, original restored and weatherstripped windows, with storms, in the old part of the house and new wooden energy efficient windows in the addition. The attic has the original rockwool insulation on the underside of the roof (what's sometimes called a "hot roof" configuration), which fills the joist-bays.

We have a UNICO high velocity mini-duct heating and cooling system, powered by a gas boiler.

Chris

[csnyder (WavyGlass)]

2500 sqft, 58 windows, thermostat usually set around 66-68. Our worst gas bill this winter was $214, with the rest all $120-160. This is for heating, hot water, and stove-top. Electric is usually under $100. We don't have A/C - yet; we're considering installing a ducted system in the attic.

Heating system is the original cast iron radiators and original piping, hooked up to a new Viessman Vitodens 100 95% AFUE mod-con boiler. The boiler also provides on-demand hot water. When we bought the house last year, the heating system was still gravity-circulated (no pumps!), with a 70's-era cast iron boiler.

We don't know how the house performed prior to our ownership - the previous owners can't remember. Our old house - half the size and with replacement windows - was almost as expensive to heat. I know at least two neighbors that had bills over $400 this year.

In addition to the boiler, we took care of all the insulation: topped off the existing blown-in cellulose in the walls (it had settled), spray-foamed the attic, spray-foamed the accessible basement rim joists, and had an insulated panel built for the basement door. All of our windows are original, and the vast majority have wooden storms.

[jschneider]

We are in northeastern PA- Natural Gas has cost us $4,056 in the past 11 months. Smallest bill was $54 (last July), biggest was $710 (February). We run two hot water heaters (40 gal for first floor, 75 for 2nd and 3rd floors), a clothes dryer, a gas range, and of course our boiler. Our house is about 4,300 SF, all original windows with Plexiglass slide in storms (not the best). The heating system is steam with a mid 1990's boiler. The house is fully insulated with fiberglass batt. What else.... oh and the thermostat is usually kept at 68-69 all day (wife is a stay at home mom).

Definitely wish that bill was smaller!

[arwenmark]

I haven't made it through a winter in my Weirton house yet, as we still live on Cape Cod, but our cape house which is about 800sf we spent about 1250 in oil last winter and about 500 a month electric bill.

[cjd]

We pay about $200 year round for gas+electric on a 'budget' plan that equalizes our bills throughout the year. It typically works out to be about $550 for gas only for the worst month in our mid-west 1924 bungalow of 2500ft2. We have a gas fired 1970s steam boiler with no wall insulation and only 3" in the attic (on the spring or fall to-do list!).

[Don M]

Our 1830's vintage stone farm house is about 3000 sq ft. It has 27 original wood windows with combo storms, a 4 yr old state of the art oil fired boiler & indirect water heater. I've been paying $350 monthly year round so approximately $4200 a year which includes annual heating system maintenance. I use to purchase all required heating oil 13 years ago in the summer for $1000 & the boiler was an older inefficient cheap unit so you can appreciate how the cost of heating oil has increased!

[Haldeman1773 (WavyGlass)]

Prior owners: $7000 per year, mostly oil, with propane in garage and one propane fireplace

Our first year: $5000, mostly oil, with some wood stove usage, and some propane in garage

Last year: $2800, all oil. Installed second wood stove mid-January, and burned approx. 5.5 cords between two stoves.

Next year, targeting $2000, all oil. I get my wood for "free", if you don't count gas for saws, log splitter, and truck, or my time for labor.

Size of house or heated space is not really nailed down. Realtor listed at 4600 sq.ft. Tax man lists at 5500 sq.ft. Appraiser listed at 6400 sq.ft. I'm guessing the tax man is the closest to reality, but it depends on what exactly you count, and which parts we heat (currently un-used finished basement, for example).