No heat in northern home all winter.
With the high cost of keeping heat in our Illinois home all winter while we are gone I am considering turning off all heat to our house. I already turn the water off and blow out the lines and winter...
Forum Discussion
As a comparison, we leave our house temp at 50F over the winter (November to April)here in southern Ontario and we heat with natural gas, we are on track to pay just under $800 for our annual gas charges in spite of the abnormal winter. We turn off the water but we don't drain it or use antifreeze over the winter period.
We lost power (and as a result heating, no furnace fan) for 24 hours during the December ice storm and the basement temperature (where most of the plumbing exists)didn't come close to freezing, I monitor the conditions with a web enabled thermostat from the warm south. I set up the system to send us and our house checker an E-mail if the temp drops down to 46F, upon the power restore we didn't get an Email alarm after the power restore. Having done calculations for heat loss due to power loss in buildings (Y2K preps) it will take a long time to have a basement area come down to freezing after a power failure.
We have the advantage of lower prices for natural gas, a 40% increase took effect April 1 but even factoring in that increase it wouldn't come close to what you are paying. A portion of our gas cost is stuff like delivery and other charges, so the increase in the bill won't really be 40%
I would look at the possibility of not heating the shed and moving sensitive stuff to the house and perhaps dropping the house temps another degree or two depending on how well the house is insulated.
We lost power (and as a result heating, no furnace fan) for 24 hours during the December ice storm and the basement temperature (where most of the plumbing exists)didn't come close to freezing, I monitor the conditions with a web enabled thermostat from the warm south. I set up the system to send us and our house checker an E-mail if the temp drops down to 46F, upon the power restore we didn't get an Email alarm after the power restore. Having done calculations for heat loss due to power loss in buildings (Y2K preps) it will take a long time to have a basement area come down to freezing after a power failure.
We have the advantage of lower prices for natural gas, a 40% increase took effect April 1 but even factoring in that increase it wouldn't come close to what you are paying. A portion of our gas cost is stuff like delivery and other charges, so the increase in the bill won't really be 40%
I would look at the possibility of not heating the shed and moving sensitive stuff to the house and perhaps dropping the house temps another degree or two depending on how well the house is insulated.
