http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3691310Oh my.
Tab Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Jul-28-08 05:20 PM
Original message
Awareness-raising post; Heating oil
I've done a few posts on this, and don't want to belabor it, but it's important.
i live in new england (forgive my capitalization deficiencies - my shift key is broken), and although a few homes heat with electricity (usually vacation homes, because electric heat sucks) or gas, or occastionally wood (which I used to do, but the novelty wears out Real Quick when you're going out in a frickin' snowstorm at two in the morning to get more wood when it's 20 below zero. Anyway, most people heat with oil. You can have a forced air system, or a hot water baseboard system, but invariably your heat and your hot water boiler run off of oil.
we buy oil usually by subscribing to a service that delivers - the prices are generally pretty close, so it just depends on who you like - and most have computerized usage calculators, so you can subscribe for automatic delivery and it's their responsibilty to properly calsculate the usage (based on history) and fill your tank before it gets empty.
Your vehicle's gas tank is usually around 16 gallons. Well, a home oil tank is typically 275 gallons. yes - do the math.
We creuise through at least 3 or 4 tanks a winten when we're goof, and that's still about something like five or six THOUSAND DOLLARS to heat the house.
A lot of this winter will be hurting. Although you can choose not to drive or whatever, houses need to be heated.
i think it's the the bigger picture that probably affects half our nation; i haven't lived in the south, so i don't know what you use, but i suspect you don't have 275 gallong oil tanks in your house, but trust me - nearly everyone up north does, and it's now moved from being a slight inconvenience to one of the top expenditures.
You know, having grown up in Nebraska, where things are a little more, uh, modern than in older places, when I lived in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, I was immensely intrigued by this heating-oil stuff.
It was delivered to houses, and nozzled into a tank.
I don't mean to sound insensitive, but man, that blew my mind. It made me think of Theodore Roosevelt, barber shop quartettes, Admiral Dewey and the
Maine, newsboys hawking the latest edition at two cents per, mustache cups, Pullman passenger cars, the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, milk wagons, the Lower East Side, Indian Head one-cent pieces, kerosene lanterns, those sorts of things.
Parche Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Jul-28-08 05:23 PM
Response to Original message
1. We need To
Start getting all homes with oil heat off, and start using electric heat..........
Solar heat from the desert southwest..............
AndyTiedye Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Jul-28-08 05:45 PM
Response to Reply #1
5. Electricity is Expensive in New England Too
dtotire (515 posts) Mon Jul-28-08 05:29 PM
Response to Original message
2. Oil Heat
I live in CT. Yes, to fill up a 275 gal tank every 3 or 4 weeks is expensive. I am having a more efficient furnace being installed next month. They are rated at 86% efficient. I understand the fuel savings are at least 25%. That should save me about $1000 per year. It will pay for itself in 5 or 6 years.
carlyhippy (388 posts) Mon Jul-28-08 05:33 PM
Response to Original message
3. we had a heat oil furnace a few years ago
it was the back-up furnace for our off-peak electric furnace, the oil furnace heated the house up toasty in a matter of minutes, where the electric furnace never could get the house warm enough and it seemed to be on all the time.
I am glad we are on a natural gas furnace now, it's still expensive, but I cannot imagine with the price of heating oil how much our bill would be every winter, it gets -20 to -40 in the winter here
NutmegYankee Donating Member (609 posts) Mon Jul-28-08 05:44 PM
Response to Original message
4. Thanks for bringing this up.
Many of the homes in New England are old, and cannot be retrofitted with forced air systems without total gutting (think early 20th century, and REAL plaster walls). Since Oil heat displaced coal about this time period, most homes use OIL. And I'm sure about one thing, the Republicans could care less if people up here freeze to death this winter. We are not their base.
That's true.
No disrespect or ill-wishes for decent and civilized people who live there, but if high fuel oil prices freeze out the primitives of Vermont, I wouldn't care any more than I care about the length of the hemline on the dress Eleanor Roosevelt was wearing on July 18, 1934.
Warpy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Jul-28-08 05:51 PM
Response to Original message
6. You're right about the lack of herbal romance around wood heat
especially when the only seasoned stuff you can get is tree lengths and you're out there freezing your tail off for weeks cutting, splitting and stacking the stuff. Oh, and yes, there's usually snow on the ground by the time the job is done. There is nothing like having to get up in a frigid house and shovel a path to the woodpile through a foot of snow and then dry it off with a hair dryer because you forgot to bring the damn stuff in the night before.
However, when you're looking at several hundred dollars for wood heat versus several thousands for the alternative, it makes a lot of sense.
Those days were the 70s and early 80s for me. My neighbors without woodstoves would get a 5 gallon Jerry can full of heating oil to take the chill off in the mornings, then bundle up for the day. Houses were kept just warm enough the pipes didn't freeze.
It also meant closing off most of the house and living in one or two rooms all winter, sleeping in unheated bedrooms.
Not fun. People who remember the 70s will remember what to do. The rest of them are going to have a very rough time of it.
Yeah, one remembers the '70s, especially the last half of them, when this was going on.
Who was the Republican president back then, the late 1970s?
