I just moved to a place outside the city, with fewer utilities than I’m used to. It uses oil heat, as well as a water heater run from a propane tank. What sort of oil and propane consumption can I expect? I realize there’s a huge range of variation here – a big drafty house kept at 75 degrees will easily use ten times as much oil as a small well-insulated house kept at 65.
For whatever it’s worth, I’m in an 800 square foot duplex constructed in the late 1940s. It has a new furnace, new windows, but given its age I’m expecting it to be a bit drafty. I’ll probably keep the thermostat low and use electric heating in whatever rooms are in use (the place is HUGE compared the apartments I’m used to). Oh, and it’s in southern Rhode Island, so there will be a moderately serious winter. So given all that – how many gallons of heating oil might I use in a season? There’s a 150 gallon tank – will I have to fill it just once, a few times, or monthly?
Also, does anyone have a clue how much propane the hot water heater will use? It’s just for showers and the dishwasher, really.
And on a tangent that’s not quite worth it’s own thread: it appears that there’s no town trash pickup around here. What can I expect from private trash removal companies?
Anecdotes are welcome! But I’d love to see some hard data if anyone can find some…
My house is about 1,090 sq. ft. and was built in 1934. (Part of it, anyway.) I have a propane furnace, and everything else is electric. I keep the house at about 65º in Winter, and it’s been costing about $175-$200 every five or six weeks. My habit is to turn the thermostat all the way down before I go to bed and when I’m out of the house (at work), and use an oil-filled electric space heater in my bedroom. Roomie moved in in December. She would turn the furnace down to 60º, and we have different schedules so the thermostat was set to 65º to 70º for longer periods. That bumped the propane use up a bit, but I don’t remember how much.
Winter electric bills generally run about $80 to $90 per month.
A metric shitload. More seriously, for a 150 gallon tank, I’d expect to empty it in around 2 months, depending on a wide range of factors. I can tell you that last winter, our house was going through nearly $800 of oil a month, which sucked mightily. But we’re colder than you are, we have a bigger house, and we’re fairly inefficient. Your oil company might be able to tell you what the usage was last year, assuming you’re using the same company as the previous residents. Oh, and we were heating our water with oil, too, which didn’t help at all.
As for private trash, ours works pretty much exactly as public trash. We put the garbage out once a week; recycling every two weeks; and they come and get it. We write a check every month, life goes on.
I know someone with a 1400 sq ft house that used less than $700 of fuel oil to heat her house the last calendar year. It was built in 1960 and has newer double pane windows. This was verified by me from the fuel oil company. The house is in Wisoconsin.
Our old house had oil heat and we used about 50% more than that for a 2000 sq ft space. One nice thing about oil heat is that it usually feels warmer at a lower thermostat setting.
What I find out is using two different fuels…seems annoying. And you say it has a new furnace…seems odd that the previous owner would replace the furnace, but keep it oil rather than just have propane for both.
My WAG is that the oil heat dates back to the original construction. The propane water heater looks like it was installed a while back – maybe 20 years ago? – perhaps as a cost saving measure, since electricity around here is expensive and propane used to be cheap. These days, though, both seem to be equivalently expensive.
As to why the furnace was replaced with another oil burner? Can’t say for sure, but I think propane has been more expensive than oil for several years now. Going by last winter’s averages, propane cost about 25% more in terms of dollars per unit heat. Also, I’m a renter, and my landlord isn’t quite as interested as I am in heating costs…