So is the conclusion on the massive usage of heating oil in NE versus other areas of the USA that use electric heat simply a function of what was cheap for so long but no longer is?
I am sorry to belabor the point, but I am curious. That cite saying that if heating oil was up over $4/gal translating into $3000/month in cost was just…amazingly expensive, and certainly not something I could afford. We’d be huddled around in blankets freezing our asses off if we suffered those kinds of energy costs…lotsa Ramen noodles, too.
FoieGrasIsEvil I’m sorry but I can’t answer your curiosity about how people could pay that much for oil…although I have had oil heat in the past when I rented the house we have now is natural gas (which overall I am very glad we have, the price has gone up but no where near as much as oil).
Electric heat pumps work less efficiently when the temperatures become really cold. When your coldest night is around freezing, they’re fine. When your cold nights are 20 degrees colder than that, they pretty much default to just being electric heaters. While I think the technology has improved, heat pumps haven’t made much of a penetration into the northeast.
Some of the ads that mention it say things like “Rent: $2575 + 1/2 of heating oil,” making it sound like they just split it. Possibly, like my current boiler-heated building, there’s only one heating unit and one thermostat for the whole building. You just have to hope either it’s programmed or it’s NOT in the apartment upstairs with the menopausal woman!
To expand on this with a real world example, I buy about 450 gallons of home heating oil (HHO) per annum. My last purchase cost £2.50* ($4.00) per gallon so at this price my annual expenditure on the product would be £1,125 (1,800). All figures supplied are approximate and are based upon today's £/ exchange rate.
I live in a small well-insulated 2 bedroom cottage in Old England, so it’s not much of a stretch to imagine a larger house or apartment in New England consuming oil to the value of $3,000 per annum as opposed to my $1,800.
$3,000 per month is clearly and completely out of court.
*Since then the price of HHO has fallen by circa 25% to £1.90 ($3.00). I bought high on the advice of my SO, who predicted oil would rise to $200 per barrel in the near future. She has since been formally requested to avoid speculation in oil futures in the financial interests of this household.
Ah, I did not know that, thank you. Fortunately winters don’t get too awfully cold for too long here, but if they do, I can always fire up my gas fireplace (or if we lose power in the winter).
You are exactly correct from a geographic standpoint - however I was thinking with respect to who was suppling/wheeling power across the grids into New England, such as Reliant and Exelon and PPL in Pennsylvania, and folks like Dynegy NE and AES in New York.
One should note that the $3000 figure was for the heating SEASON, not PER MONTH.
Add me into the list of folks that locked in my oil buy this year >$4.00/gal. I wish I hadn’t, but in general, I’ve made out better on pre-buy in the past, so I’m putting this year up as an expensive “out of the norm.”
I currently live not too far from Allentown PA, and lived in Allentown itself while I was in college. If you need additional info on this area, let me know, I may be able to help.
On the heat front, I have a two story, three bedroom house that was built just before world war one and is heated by an oil furnace (hot water radiators)… last winter I paid about $1300.00 for heat (over the whole winter). This year so far, oil is looking to be quite a bit less per gallon, so I expect that number may be lower unless the weather is unusually cold.
Very often around here you will see older homes converted into 2 or three unit rental properties. Quite frequently the original heating system is left intact In those cases, the landloard very often buys the oil, and then bills the individual tenets for their share of the cost. This can suck if the neighbor in control of the thermostat has a tendency to turn it up to 80 so he can wear shorts in Feburary, but typically it’s not a big deal. Several of the houses in my neighborhood that were built at the same time as my house are now two unit rentals… so leaving some leeway for diferences in temperature needs, those tennets were probably paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $700.00 for heat over the course of last winter (which was likely about twice as much as they paid the winter before). I should also note that for some properties the cost of heating your domestic hot water would be included in the oil bill, and some will have an electric hot water heater… it’s worth checking with the landlord as to exactly what utilities are in play.
If you were to move here in August, you’d definately have a bit of time before you need to deal with heat. August and September are are usually still quite warm here, if not outright hot. I only turned the heat on in my house last week, and it’s really only running about once a day at this point. If it’s an apartment, the landlord will likely take care of obtaining the oil, and just bill you for your share, either on a monthly basis with your rent, or per delivery (for smaller rentals) so you won’t have anything to set up, and you could really treat it like a regular utility bill. If you rent a house, you will likely be responsible for dealing with an oil delivery service on your own.
That $3000/year number is from an article that’s very much out of date (even if it’s only from August). It mentions oil at $4.70/gal - it’s gone down a lot since then. I just called my company, and they’re down to $2.99/gal. They were $3.39/gal 2 weeks ago when they topped off the tank. I’m so glad I didn’t give them $250 to get a capped price of $3.99.
WhyNot, for another data point: we turned on the heat for the first time last weekend, and only for a few nights. It’s been completely off for the past 5 days or so. October temps are notoriously variable (I was in shorts and t-shirt yesterday working outside), but IIRC the heat isn’t on permanently until mid-November. We used around 700 gallons last year, for a large 4 bedroom house, and a relatively mild winter.
Electric heat has traditionally been the most expensive way to heat here in New England; oil heat has traditionally been the cheapest.
As has been noted above, electric heat pumps do not work well when temperatures get much below freezing.
Most of the housing stock in New England utilizes oil baseboard heat. The furnace heats up water, which is recirculated through baseboard radiators. In my last house, the furnace was also used to heat potable water for the house. So even in the summer, when you turned on a hot water tap, the furnace fired up. (There was no hot water storage heater.) Over a typical heating season, we used about 800 gallons of heating oil for our 1,800 square foot house. Realize that a “heating season” is basically the amount of oil used for a whole year; it’s called a “season” because you use it primarily over the winter months, of course. (We used relatively little oil for hot water during warmer months.)
Some oil companies give you the option of spreading the payments evenly over the whole year. This helps many people with a budget. You may have to lock in a price to get this option, though.
In recent years, natural gas is replacing oil in many houses in areas where it is available.
When I built my new house three years ago, I foresaw that oil prices were heading up. Plus, note that oil heat is basically the same thing as diesel fuel. My old furnace used a forced exhaust “power vent” that exhausted furnace fumes into the back yard. Every time my furnace fired up, it was like having a diesel truck idling in the back yard. No thanks.
So anyway, since natural gas was not available, I opted for a propane furnace in my new house. I have a 500-gallon buried propane tank in my backyard that is used for heat, hot water, gas stove, and gas fireplace. I get a monthly delivery of propane just like the monthly delivery of heating oil I got in my previous house.
