When I bought my house 25 years ago, I burned cord wood off my property and backed it up with fuel oil. The house came with a scary combo wood/oil furnace (Deathinator 500) which I never tried to burn wood in. I had a crappy wood stove which was nice in that it lit the room through the cracks, but the air control was designed by someone who clearly failed mechanical design and heat transfer. The house bounced between 95 and 55. I live on top of a mountain on a road fit at that time mostly for goats and Mongolian pack horses. After hauling gravel the first year, I got 4X4 cars up the hill. and who would have thought the oil guy refused to come up after October and before April (mud season). No guts no glory. So the 275 gallon tank in the basement was it. One year I ran out and got a 55 gallon drum full in the back of my trusty plow truck (lovingly named Fe2O3).
When the kids came we ditched the wood stove and put a 1000 gal tank in and bought the first tankful for (this will age me) $0.69 per gallon. So good bye wood, and hello imported Arab oil. the American dream. So each year I used 800 gallons worth (can you say leaky house, but what the heck, $0.69 per gallon?
So as oil went up and my cute little kids turned into militant tree huggers, we used less and less oil until I had to start peeling the dog dish off the my dogs tongue each morning. We got down to about 500 gallons a year but the price shot up to $3.00 a gallon. So it was time for change.
Four things happened. My kids started leaving the nest, and had no problems sleeping in the cold (eat your hearts out parents) when they came home. I installed a new oil furnace that was way more efficient than the DeathStar. We installed a pellet stove (Harmon XXV, awesome stove). And this year, I had the main part of the house sealed and insulated. As a result, I am on track to heat my house with something less than 3 tons of pellets. The oil furnace was on 1 day while I was gone after Christmas (thermostat = 50F) and once last fall for 15 minutes to make sure it still worked.
So I am going from $1500 per year to about $600 per year, and I don't have to chip ice out of the shower head each morning.
Fuel oil right now is $3.78 and if I had not changed anything I would still be burning 800 gallons, or $3K per year instead of $600 per year. That's a lot of wool socks.
So thanks to our incentive program at AER (where I work) for help with the pellet stove and insulation. Now I gotta work on my electric hot water heater..
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