It’s Like Christmas In July
And I don’t mean that in a good way.
It’s 90+ degrees and I’m already worried about keeping the family from freezing this winter while still putting food on the table. The house we’re renting (renting being the key here) has an oil-burning boiler that heats the home through baseboard units. We moved into this place in February, and by the end of March we’d used 125 gallons of oil, with the thermostat kept at 60-65F most of the time.
With heating oil prices climbing toward $5 a gallon, that’s roughly $300 a month on oil during the end of the winter, not the coldest part.
Did I mention I’m worried?
This house is drafty, the windows all need to be replaced, and the upstairs loses a lot more heat than the downstairs because the downstairs exterior is brick. I can’t make modifications of any kind to the house because I don’t own it, so I’m looking for temporary solutions to augment our heating this winter in a cost-effective way that will allow us to keep the thermostat on the boiler as low as possible without the pipes freezing.
I know I’ve got a lot of smart readers out there who have learned by trial and error how to be thrifty and live sustainably for all the right reasons. I would love, love, love to get your input on this if you have time.
One other thing - we do have a wood-burning open-hearth fireplace in one room downstairs against the garage wall, but it seems to offer very little heat and I’ve always heard that fireplaces suck more warmth out than they bring in. Don’t know if there’s any way around that.
Thanks in advance to those of you who will be filling the comm-box (hint, hint) with good ideas!
Filed under: Family, Money, OMG, Or Lack Thereof
Hot water bottles. One for each of you at bedtime (not the babies). Ignore the warning where it says not to use boiling water. We put our thermostat down to 15 celsius, 59 F, at night in winter.
Can you turn down the heat in individual rooms or areas? This can make a big difference.
Use a space heater. Not for big spaces, but with the thermostat waaaay down, you can use it to heat a single room at night. Refer to your earlier post’s comments for the other benefits of the “family bed”.
If you have a room or area that’s particularly cold, if you can, seal it up and don’t use it. Don’t let that cold into the rest of the house, I mean.
Use those window kits with the shrink film. They work. Weather strip the doors and caulk the windows. You can get stuff that peels away clean, so you can remove it in spring. Bonus, get your wife to help you so you get to say “please hold my caulk” and “whoa, that’s some big gap. You think my caulk’ll fill it?” etc.
Stop the fireplace. It draws your heat outside. Cram stuff up it. Be sure to remove before burning or insurance inspection.
The previous commentors idea about the film for the windows is a great one. That stuff can do wonders for drafts and such. We have found the kind that you use a hair dryer to put up seems to be much tighter and provide better draft protection. If you can’t install more weather stripping (since it’s a rental) around the doors then you can place rolled up bath towels all along the base to cut the draft too. If there is a drafty back door or something you don’t use, completely seal that off with the plastic window film.
As far as the thermostat, we have found that setting it at a tolerable temperature and leaving it there saves us more. Then the furnace isn’t playing catch up first thing in the morning (when it is coldest outside) to make up for the lower thermostat you set at night.
For the winters we were in our drafty over 100 year old house with the oil furnace we invested in these small $10 space heaters. They put off surprisingly alot of heat, are completely cool to the touch for the kids and they shut off if they are knocked over. I would run just one of them during the day in whatever room we were in, or in the kid’s bedroom for nap time and then we would do one in each bedroom for night time.
We also found it very helpful to invest in really warm slippers with grippies on the bottom (we had all hard wood floors). Our favorites are from Lands End because they have the booty type top which also seals in the heat at the ankle. I got these at a garage sale for about 50 cents each. Another good investment for us was a few down throw blankets. They were $10/each or less and are so warm to just throw on when you sit down. Of course, hooded sweatshirts are a must..
Talk to your landlord about the windows, if you haven’t already. What could it hurt?
Steve, I just read down the page, so you can disregard the comment above.
I’d say, based on everything you’ve said, wrap up the lease and move. Moving during a pregnancy is sub-optimal, yes. I speak from experience; I moved during a pregnancy before. It ain’t fun. But it was necessary in my case, and it may very well be necessary in yours.
We have the same kind of heating system in our old farmhouse, and were astounded at how much we were spending on heating oil last winter. We quickly bought several cords of firewood and began using the woodburning insert the previous owners had installed in the living room; it saved us a ton. But I’m not sure an open hearth fireplace would work as well; this thing is a sealed unit with a fan blowing hot air out into the room.
Other comments about space heaters are also good. We did that in our boys’ room last winter; allowed us to shut the furnace off at night and keep their room tolerable.
One other suggestion: check with the oil company and see if there’s any way you can set up a contract ahead of the winter. Lots of oil companies allow people to lock in a certain price before winter sets in.
OK, here’s a question: I’ve always heard that space heaters are electricity hogs. Is this not the case?
And Carriere? Real classy. I laughed nearly loudly enough to wake the kids, and my wife and I spent a while thinking of how to keep the joke going, but we’ve decided to leave it at that.
Space heaters are hogs but the hoggery is balanced against the savings of only heating the space you are using and inasmuch as it is impractical and cost prohibitive to build a tiny high efficiency forced-air gas furnace in each room, they are the only option. Use them prudently and they will save you money.
On a tangential note: I’m noticing a new push for home geothermal air conditioning setups in the DC area. Allegedly, you get 54-55 degree temps from 6 feet underground up to your house, so it can be Luray Caverns all year long.
Boy, do I ever want that in my apartment complex.
Umm… yeah… about the space heaters…. We rented a house that sounds rather similar to yours for a year and a half…. We bought a space heater with a thermostat thinking it would save us energy. Turns out the house wasn’t insulated well enough and the water pipes were on the outside wall. So even the room was at 70 degrees, we had a pipe freeze, and the plumber (and thus our landlord) blamed us, because they said the space heater kept the furance from kicking on to circulate and warm the water in the pipes. I had to threaten to sue to get even most of our deposit back. We settled for $500 less than the value of our deposit. So I’m rather leery of space heaters.
That said - I’m assuming you can change the curtains. Insulated curtains helped us. Weather stripping was good, and I like the idea of the window film. Locking in a price would have saved us a lot of money this year, but it’s always a gamble unless you can find a supplier that will drop the price if it goes down, and locking in only means that your price won’t go up. We were also “locked in” to a particular oil supplier, as our landlord had a furnace contract with one of them. She wouldn’t let up shop around because it would have voided her warranty for the furnace.
Sorry if I have only scary warnings!
A fireplace insert is a great idea IF:
If wood burning is not regulated beyond usefulness by the local government,
If wood is even semi-reasonably priced. Pellet stoves are much more efficient and cheap to feed than the conventional cordwood burning stove. If you have a place to run a gas line, the gas type are very cheap to run. (many pre-1950 houses have a hole in the floor near the chimney where the free-standing oil furnace used to stand)
If you can get one cheaply enough. Spending $1500 to save $500 in heating bills for one year makes no sense.
If you don’t come up with a fireplace insert, seal the d@#$ fireplace off. Like plywood and insulation and weather stripping seal it. Fireplaces are huge heat sinks and extremely inefficient. Almost all the heat they generate goes up the chimney. On a cold day a fireplace will actually make the rest of the house colder.
The window film is great because it not only seals leaks, it adds a layer of glazing, increasing the heat-capturing efficiency of the windows.
Some local power utilities, at least here in the NW, will actually do a heating audit of your home and give you a prioritized list of ways to improve your comfort and save money.
Space heaters save money by heating the space that is in use instead of the whole house. A modern furnace with zoned heat regulation can do the same, but that’s not an option for you.
You can save quite a bit of money by making quilted drapes. Nobody that I know of sells them. If you do, make them of polyester, so they don’t hold water. Also wash them with bleach on a fairly regular basis. Since they won’t have a vapor barrier, they tend to accumulate condensation, and mildew.
Insulate the water heater. You can buy a WH insulation kit for less than $20. I have two installed on one water heater.
Bake bread every day. The oven actually puts a lot of heat into the room, and eating fresh bread makes a cold room warm. Eat a lot of soups and stews too. They are very warming.
I presume I don’t have to tell someone from NY state to wear long underwear in cold weather.
Thanks again for all your suggestions. I won’t assume this thread is dead until I stop getting notified that comments have come in.
The one consistent thing here is that window film. I had almost forgotten about it, but I know my dad used it when we were kids. I will look into that for sure, as well as some space heaters, getting the fireplace closed off, etc.
This is my first older home as an adult with a family (we’ve always rented new places or apartments before now) and while it only dates back 30 or 40 years, it’s enough. The practical advice you’re all offering is quite helpful.
We use window film with our “new” (1995) house, because the contractor who built it used The Cheapest Windows Known To Mankind™. It helps. (I think it’s technically against the association bylaws, but I’m interpreting “no plastic on windows” to mean the cheap, thick, ugly translucent stuff, and our association [thank God!] isn’t into Gestapo-like enforcement anyway. YMMV on that.)
Smoke inside. You let a lot of heat out when you open the door and you waste all that heat energy stored in the tobacco.
To add something about soups and stews: I usually let my soup pot simmer all night on the stove. Amazing how much warmer the downstairs is on a morning when I’ve been simmering soup all night. It does warm you while you eat it. But it also warms the house while it’s cooking.
Danby is right about woodburning units. We were fotunate one came with our house when we bought it — and wood is increadibly cheap here in MI. Much more expensive when were in IL on the prairie.
Not an option for you, but when we were in IL we really liked our woodburning cook stove. It radiated heat, and became the center of family life, and we did cook on it — particularly things that could simmer, like stews and soups, and were not sensitive to precise temp changes. Our bedroom was just off the kitchen, and we found a couple of logs thrown into the woodstove late at night could keep us comfortable all night even in the dead of winter. And with all the kids jammed in the bedroom with us, that only helped too.