Are you doing anything special this winter?

[keeneye]

Are you doing anything special this winter to reduce the amount you spend on heating. I have heard that it will be a very expensive heating winter due to the price of oil. I've been reading up and have done a few things. I bought a programmable thermostat this past week and it is now installed. I'm hoping that helps some and I'm looking forward to waking up and not having it feezing in my room. What do you find keeps your heating bill down the most during winter?

[vendigirl]

Since I installed my programmable thermostat my equalized payments have gone down $15 a month- that's $180 a year! Well worth the $25 investment. Ands this is in spite of the fact that we had central air installed two years ago- so we actually use more gas to run that in the summer.
We have been doing the usual winterizing- new door sweeps, weatherstripping, sealing what leaks we can, and putting plastic sheeting on the windows. All the windows in our house need to be replaced, which is pretty pitiful for a house that's 15 years old. We likely won't do that until the mortgage is paid off in 2 years, so until then we have to have ugly plastic on the windows or freeze when we sit in front of them.
I've also been trying to open the curtains and blinds on south facing windows on sunny days and if I find it cold in the house I'll bake something to warm up the kitchen and living room- which is where the kids and I usually hang out all day anyway.
So far the weather has been amazing where I am. We had a high that was 15 degrees (celsius) over the normal temperture today. A few weeks of great weather will take us a long way to keeping our overall heating costs down this winter.

[PrincessPerky]

I heard once a actual math on the cost per degree of heat per square foot. I would imagine it is a rough formula of some sort, but I finally convinced my huisband to turn the heat down this year (last year we had just had our girl and I didn't try to hard) Anyway he was convinced because my SIL found out from the electric company that turning the air down 2 degrees made a 20% difference in the bill. Not sure how accurate that is but I used it to convince him to turn the heat to 67 degrees (which means when he is cold it will go up to 69
We have a new house so there is no issue with weather stripping or anything, just in getting the kids to get out the house faster so we can shut the door sooner!

[terry1156]

Originally Posted by PrincessPerky

We have a new house so there is no issue with weather stripping or anything, just in getting the kids to get out the house faster so we can shut the door sooner!

I think it is little things like that which can make a big difference in heating costs. I have avery bad habit of leaving the door wide open while the pets decide if they want to go outside or not. I do the same thing when trying to decide what I want to eat in front of the fridge. It drives my wife crazy. I need to work on that more.

[akaivyleaf]

What about electric blankets and space heaters. I try to only heat up the room I'm in and since I live alone and I can tolerate a year round temp of 68 or so...

[amomof4]

I had new windows installed with an R rating of 10. My contractor told me that what I had before was windbreakers. We also installed a very effiecent wood stove. Now we only spend $400 a year to heat.

I heard about the prediction for a cold winter. Are ski slopes are crying that there is no snow. This is the warmest winter so far since I moved to the NW.

[terry1156]

It has been a fairly warm winter for us thus far too. No complaints though. It does save us money when the heater doesn't need to be on all the time.