I have a question about house heating bills. I live in a traditional single family home in Queens, NY and the heating system is powered by oil. Recently oil cost has sky-rocketed by leapts and bounds and my oil heat bill became nasty expensive. I am just wondering, is any other single family homes in NYC paying $900/month for heat as well (electricity not yet included)? Thank you so much for your input!
Special shout out to Judith K., Vanessa M., Gamma G., Jennifer S., B.P., Momof2girls and Anna Lee B. for your GREAT responses. You ladies rocked! I especially like Judith's advise about the buget plan because it sounds very practical and will help me leverage my heat bill throughout the year. Although it's probably too late to start this year but at least now I have better plan to battle next year's monster heat bill! Just another thing, valuable lesson learnt, you'll never know unless you ask. These ladies really know what they are doing!
I'm in the same exact predicament. I now keep my thermostat at 66 degrees. We also use that Amish heater thing and it actually works. I hate being an adult and complaining about the price of oil heat but friends with electric heat complain too. Good luck!!
My mom is in Queens. Single family 2 story home. She has gas heat and last month was $400. She keeps it at 62 at night 68 during the day. She said gas is going up too, but the oil was always pricier. Do you keep it too warm? Do you have drafts? She seals her windows with that plastic wrap you can buy at Home Depot. $900 that's rotten, sorry.
I live in Suffolk County and we are paying approx 700/month for oil - we have new(er) windows and our house is only 1700 sq ft. We asked the man who filled our tank if it was normal to go through 200 gallons per month and he said for a family of 4 in the dead of winter it is normal to go through that much oil. You're not alone!
That sounds kind of nuts. We are outside of Boston and even in a cold, cold winter, we go through 150 gallons every two months, costing about $450-$500 per fill up at a little over $3 a gallon. How much square footage do you have? Our house is pretty small - 1100 sq feet - but even if the house were twice as large, I'd still be paying half of what you are.
I live in CT. We just got an oil delivery on Saturday. $3.44/gal. I'm estimating it's costing about $475 per month for heat and hot water (electricy not included), for a single family house.
WOW!!!!
I thought ours was high. We are low income and sometimes we just can't afford to pay our natural gas bill and let it get turned off so we can use the money for other bills. In the Summer we don't use much but if we average it out the bill is still close to $100 a month. We have elec. water heater and dryer. The stove and other stuff that is gas is hardly ever on during Summer either.
It we get a cold spell we plug in the electric heaters, one is a fan blowing over hot coils and the other is a radiant heater that looks like a small radiator. I like the radiant heater for smaller rooms better. They are great for super warming the bathroom or a bedroom. They stay in the medium range and I check the wall around the outlet often to see if the outlet or wall is getting warm, signs that the unit is using too much power from that socket. If it is set on medium heat it should cycle off and on like a central unit would. I find that it keeps the rooms warm and comfy.
In you situation I would think keeping the house cooler during the day and a bit warner at night would be ideal. You can put on some extra clothes for daytime and then be comfortable at night. I just hate getting up and sitting on a cold toilet seat.
The electric heaters would, of course, move some cost in to the electric bill but electricity may be much cheaper per unit.
I live in upstate ny and my husband and i are on a budget plan. We got on the budget when the price of oil was way down, therefore we have a locked price. The budget is figured according to our usage amount per winter. Sure, we make a small payment each month but its not as hard as trying to come up with a lump sum for each delivery. We have automatic delivery and our budget also includes having the furnace serviced regularly. Our payments each month are around 130.00. Almost any fuel company will do a budget plan with their customers as long as they have good credit. For us, this is the only way to afford to heat our home. We pay these payments every month all year long and if there is an overpayment then the money is applied to our next years heating bill. I would check with your oil company and see if they have a budget plan like this.
So you get 2 fills a month? Yes, that is probably too often. Couple things going on. Is you house older? How are your windows? You could be losing a lot of heat. What do you keep your house temperature on? We have a woodburning stove and that keeps our heating down. Before we got it we kept it on 67 during the day and 60 at night. Try shopping around for oil prices, they can be competitive.
Wow. At what temp do u keep heat. Also how big is your house and how many zones. Need this info to help.
This January we had a $900 oil bill also. Our heat has been set lower than in the past and we've been working on sealing any leaks...old house, old windows, newly insulated roof/attic. I think it was just A LOT colder (and snow-y-er) this January! Not looking forward to the next fill-up.
