What's your bill ?

[WVwoodsman]

Our electirc bill is about $100 a month (budget plan) and natural gas is $8 monthly for just having an account. Our house is heated exclusively with an owb and hot water is heated with the owb as well. Secondary heat is a gas furnace which we turned on for a few days when we were out of town. Before we installed an owb we were spending around $1200 in natural gas to heat our house.

 

[Deleted member 83629]

light bill was 43.07 but my stove has not been out for almost 1 month and i keep it fired hard. electric prices here are 9 cents per kwh.

 

[Lignator]

wow.....we are definitely getting screwed in CT! I think I am around $.15-$.19 per KW all in.

 

[deerlakejens]

We have an all electric house but heat with wood. Have a space heater at opposite end of house that's on for about 4 hrs. per evening when it's below 40. We pay .086 for first 600 per kw, then .104 per kw above that. Level pay plan keeps us at $125 per month, mainly for hot water and dryer.

 

[blades]

Mid Dec to Mid Jan $125, to mid Feb. $130 combined NG and Elec. with all fees which are indexed to amount used. On the Oct to Nov bill actual ng used was $5.00, but cost $12 to use it. Oh and the utility promptly came out and changed the sending unit again, 8th one in 3 years.

 

[haveawoody]

My oil flapper got insulated about 5 years ago.
0$ for me, with fuel prices and this brutal winter makes you glad to be a woodchuck

 

[alleyyooper]

Nada none nothing.
Well hard to compute the gas for the saw and tractor and just how much oil I used for premix and the bar as I just don't keep track of it. I just know I am not shelling out any thing to thieves every month.

Al

 

[olyman]

curious if propane has a shelf life? I know gas goes bad after awhile.

no...

 

[jhoff310]

From November to February my gas bill was $330. I heat 2500 sqft with gas hot water and gas dryer...so $80 a month. I cant complain one bit since it was the 5th coldest winter on record for our area. I have sure burned through some wood.

Jeff

 

[Dalmatian90]

curious if propane has a shelf life? I know gas goes bad after awhile.

It's good until the tank rusts out...so you want to transfer it into a new tank every 30 years or so

Makes it a really good fuel for backup generators since it lasts indefinitely and you don't have issues with carbs and such gumming up, as long as you're comfortable you have enough storage to last until propane delivery can begin again following a natural disaster.

 

[beerman6]

Use to top off a 500 gallon propain tank every month in the winter,now we have a 100 gallon that we get topped every 2 years...

 

[Deleted member 83629]

no power to speak off right now been running the diesel gene for since 7am.

 

[Vangellis]

That's an incredibly high rate ours is 11 cents here . I believe your story it sounds exactly like something a big shot liberal politician would come up with. . They promise it will pay off in the future if we just " invest " now .. The cost is high and the benefit never materializes to the customer . I saw this happen in pa several times over the years . We were promised if we permit a few casinos to come to the area the resulting revenue would in turn lower our property taxes . So The casinos came in along with their crime drugs and moral decay .. but after ten years the taxes only went up every year never went down ..a total lie . I heat with 100% wood

Don't get me started. I was just thinking about that issue the other day when we got our one property tax bill. Vote Casino, lower your tax bill. What a bunch of crap.



Kevin

 

[taskswap]

I thought with propane the thing was not so much the gas going bad as it was condensation and such in the generator / other devices so you had to exercise them every so often. Use a bit of gas but worth it.

So let's look at this another way. I don't know about monthly costs - they vary so much with the weather that it's hard to tell. But the first two years we lived in this house we paid $4500 in oil to heat it, and the way I hear it we did OK because our neighbors paid more. Last September we ran out of oil in the tank and I said "we're done." We already had the boiler so I just went crazy stockpiling wood. I added an electric hot water heater partly for backup, partly because it was an easy way off the DHW coil in the oil boiler - I wasn't ready to plumb everything "right" to do the same with the wood boiler... not quite yet anyway.

I paid $1400 for wood because I didn't quite get enough put by and with this darn "polar vortex" I figure we'll still need another 2 cords at local market prices (currently $200-$225 per cord where "seasoned" means like 3 months, as near as I can figure by moisture content..."). And I'm still chuckling all the way. I could buy twice as much cut/split and still be ahead.

So I'm moving 12 cords around with a darn wheelbarrow and my neighbors can't figure out why I'm smiling all the time. But I know... And you all know...

 

[Deleted member 83629]

I thought with propane the thing was not so much the gas going bad as it was condensation and such in the generator / other devices so you had to exercise them every so often. Use a bit of gas but worth it.

So let's look at this another way. I don't know about monthly costs - they vary so much with the weather that it's hard to tell. But the first two years we lived in this house we paid $4500 in oil to heat it, and the way I hear it we did OK because our neighbors paid more. Last September we ran out of oil in the tank and I said "we're done." We already had the boiler so I just went crazy stockpiling wood. I added an electric hot water heater partly for backup, partly because it was an easy way off the DHW coil in the oil boiler - I wasn't ready to plumb everything "right" to do the same with the wood boiler... not quite yet anyway.

I paid $1400 for wood because I didn't quite get enough put by and with this darn "polar vortex" I figure we'll still need another 2 cords at local market prices (currently $200-$225 per cord where "seasoned" means like 3 months, as near as I can figure by moisture content..."). And I'm still chuckling all the way. I could buy twice as much cut/split and still be ahead.

So I'm moving 12 cords around with a darn wheelbarrow and my neighbors can't figure out why I'm smiling all the time. But I know... And you all know...

move down towards me, a cord cost 100-150 seasoned hickory.

 

[taskswap]

move down towards me, a cord cost 100-150 seasoned hickory.

But then I'd have to live in Kentucky...

jk!!!! Seriously, it's beautiful down there and hard to pass up for a Bourbon fan, but with kids in the area, complicated life... We don't all make this choice freely.

And I'm STILL laughing all the way to the bank. F-you big oil.

 

[KindredSpiritzz]

And I'm STILL laughing all the way to the bank. F-you big oil.

they'll just get you on the back end this summer with higher gas prices

 

[Johnny Yooper]

first four years in house propane was primary heat source but it became backup when we installed the OWB in Nov. 2004; heating 2000 sq. ft. home w/in floor heat in basement, 24x36' workshop and domestic hot water for 5; monthly cost for cutting/gathering firewood is $12.75 (saw gas & oil, plus diesel for the tractor used for fetching wood in the woodlot) and to be honest I factor in the $17.30 to run the circulating pump from OWB-to-house loop, so we're running about $30 per month for heating. For grins I called the propane company in mid January and was quoted $4.899 per gallon; was probably somewhat less in December and I'm sure it has tapered off some now as well, if we were still on propane, I estimate $1000 for January, $600 for December and $800 for February excluding the workshop. That would certainly get me a couple of dandy chain saws, but the twenty year old Husky 51 is still hanging in there. We do get raked over the coals (no pun intended) by the $.12something kWh rate.

My dad asks what we go through in propane per year since we converted to wood and I reply that we burn more propane in our outdoor grill than we do to heat the house and dhw.

The wife says I'm simply crazy with this wood heating hobby, but I tell her in all honesty that it pains me more to write a check to the propane company. Especially during winters like this one.

 

[Poindexter]

When I divide KWH on my electric bill by dollars on my electric bill I am paying about 25 cents per kilowatt hour. They got a full page of charges on there, account service fee, fuel surcharge and so on. #2 heating oil costs me about 10 cents per kilowatt hour ($3.86/ gallon).

Going rate is $300/ cord here for seasoned cord wood, but I get to pick a stick and use my moisture meter before they dump the truck. I can buy wood for $200/ cord if I am willing to take my chances without the moisture meter. Standing green timber costs me about $80/ cord allowing for gas in the truck and gas in the saw and everything else I can think of. Cord wood I cut my self works out to about 4 cents per klilowatt hour, plus my time.

DWH is on the oil burner in the furnace, I am at about two gallons of oil per day for DWH with three girls with long hair in the house, doing good there.

Burning one cord of wood I cut saves about $400 on the oil bill.

My big electricity expense is the headbolt heaters on the automobiles parked outside. About 25 cents per vehicle per hour, but I have all those on timers, so they only come on about two hours before the vehicle is needed in the morning. Still, 3 vehicles x 2 hours x 30 days is not chump change every month.

 

[windthrown]

For heating, zip. 100% wood heat here. I have never turned on the electric furnace here. Suppose I should at least test it. Maybe next year. I did plug in two oil space heaters when the temps got down to 7 degrees here in December. Maybe cost $10 more that month. I also run a 60 watt light bulb as a heater in the well house. So that is $4 a month. Otherwise the electric bill is about $60 a month. Water heater, washer/dryer, oven, lights, wood stove fan, TV, stereo, 'puter, well pump.