Disconnected from the Natural Gas Co: My Thoughts. Anybody else doing this / done it?

[kolbyTheDog]

Wanted to share this just in case others are thinking about doing this:

This has been our first season burning wood and we really enjoyed it. We only ran our Natural Gas forced air furnace one day after installing the stove (we were lazy for one day!). Our NG provider does a Actual/Estimate billing system (they don't have the cellular meters here yet) so one month our bill would be $8 (connection fee) and then the next month it would be their "estimate" which was around $100!! I was set up on auto pay out of my bank account, so they were happy to take my $100 and hold onto it for a few months and pay it back to me in bill credits. Since we have a electric stove and electric hot water heater, my wife concluded that we should shut the NG service off and save the $8--$10 per month over the summer and beyond as we will go 100% wood heat again next winter.

I called up the NG provider (Nicor) and they said "what about your stove? what about your hot water heater? -- OK we will disconnect you, but if you want to come back to us you will have to pay the monthly connection fee for all the months you weren't connected." I guess this is how they keep people from disconnecting during the summer and reconnecting going into the winter. I began to think twice but my wife said smartly, "better us to keep that money than pay them every month on the chance we might use some gas. If we need to reconnect, it will be the same difference!" Good logic to me!

I was kinda shocked that they didn't try harder to keep me as a customer. I didn't get transfered to the "win back department" nor was I offered a special "wood heater discount plan." I asked the operator if I sold my house and the new owner wanted to reconnect, would they have to pay all the back months charges and she said "no". So, maybe if I do need to reconnect for some reason, I'll just sign up in my mother in-law's name as though she bought the house to save the charges!

My furnace is old, inefficient, and unreliable (one of the main reasons we got the wood stove). Our air conditioner is also old and may not make it though the summer. I might just get a new central AC and electric heat pump and forget about gas forever!

 

[burntime]

The reality is that they will probably not back charge you if you are disconected for a year or more. The only problem I see is that you are strapped to the house now. No vacations away, its like having a pet...gotta go home and feed the stove I heat almost exclusively with NG but it is nice to know if your gone for 2 days that the furnace will keep things for you.

 

[colebrookman]

For me I would think twice before getting rid of gas. As mentioned it's a great back up for the $100/year and frees you to do things away from home. I would, instead get rid of the electric stove and hot water and get gas. Then if you have no elctric you still can cook and take showers. Just make sure the heater runs on a pilot light. I'm set up with LP and it's nice to have a hot meal, summer or winter when the power goes down. Also if you get under the weather in winter just heat with gas and take the pressure off your mate to stoke the fires. My LP heater also runs by pilot which means I have heat, no blower of course, if power is out. Just my way but it works for us.

 

[savageactor7]

wow...I hope our gas LP company doesn't disconnect us for not enough use. They came for the 1st time since last summer and topped our tank off with about $425 worth of gas. Having a backup stove is nice if you leave for a few days...or those real, real cold mornings.

 

[colebrookman]

I bought my own tank 15 yrs ago because my former supplier was an ***. Now I can shop around but the guy I bought the tank from is always the cheapest. I average 11 gals per month which includes lots of good cooking and the heater which goes on if the stove goes out, if I get lazy or if we go away for a winter weekend at the Cape. Still have electric for water heating but will add solar this summer. works for me.

 

[pinewoodburner]

Before you think about switching a stove or hot water to NG, do a cost comparison with the electric. What is the pay back?
It was also mentioned about if you lost power. How often does that happen?
Last time I lost power it was 4 years ago.
If it was me, I would look at how many little space heaters you might need in the winter if you where to go out of town for a weekend. If you travel alot, keep the gas for a backup. If you don't travel, drop them and save the $. You can alwas reconnect in the future if you want.

 

[Jags]

Just a thought, but you could buy a (or 2) 100 pound cylinders for propane. Change your furnace over to propane and then you have your furnace, your not tied to the NG fees and you own your tanks, so you can shop around for fuel if need be. A couple of 100 pounders should run your furnace for several days, and if your only concern is emergency, or leaving for a week in the tropics, it would serve your purpose.

 

[SlyFerret]

I'd love to get rid of my propane furnace and replace it with a geothermal heat pump. That is my plan some day.

Our furnace is the only thing on Propane, the stove and water heater are electric.

-SF

 

[Backwoods Savage]

We have lived without a furnace for 30 years...and it has caused no problems. In fact, I took the furnace right out and sold it 30 years ago.

One time we went away for several days during the winter. Two small pelonis ceramic heaters kept the water lines from freezing and when we got home, the house was at 55 degrees. No, having no furnace hasn't bothered us at all and we do not feel tied to the house.

 

[billb3]

The ONLY thing I miss from my old house (recently moved) is the gas stove.
Just the range part.

I'd rather pay a few bucks for the gas for back-up heat, cooking and hot water than what some pay for cable. (now that's highway robbery)
alas there is no natuaral gas here

 

[pcampbell]

Some great replies.

If you would just switch your water heater to gas it would probably pay for itself and connection fees.

With regard to propane, you need to check on price of propane delivered vs gas + connection fee.

 

[swestall]

Can't you just go to them and tell them you want an actual bill for service used? I have that connection charge and in the summer don't use gas, but that's just the way it is.
They should be able to bill you for what you use, no plan of any type.

 

[Redox]

I have natural gas and wouldn't give it up if I could help it. We use it for cooking (range and gas grill), hot water and clothes dryer as well as the furnace. I've gotten over hearing it run occasionally when it's really cold out! There is still no cheaper way to heat (short of wood heat, of course) and delivery is very rarely a problem. Converting to propane is expensive and now I'm finding that the propane companies don't want to sell you 50 gal at a clip. I helped my father install an LP generator for backup power and it's been less than a pleasant experience, but now he doesn't have gasoline sitting around the garage getting stale. The economics to convert probably aren't there unless you have a large family and do a lot of laundry. Our utility charges $13/month to leave it connected and not used.

 

[RonB]

As others have said, I would think about switching out the electric stove or possible water heater to be NG. I have an all electric home (geo thermal heat/AC) and no NG. NG runs in the street in front of my property but my house sets back 800-900 feet from the road. That means $$$ to run it to me. The main thing we miss with NG is the range cook top. Ask any good cook and they always want a flame that can be adjusted rather than electric burners. You have a chance to get that gas cooktop and then you can adsorb/justify the min monthly gas charge. Also, often times the estimates do get corrected to align better with your useage. What about calling in the meter reading on the months they estimate? I do that with my electric and I only see the meter reader about 1X per year.

 

[kolbyTheDog]

I guess our situation is a little different than most. We have two dogs so we don't travel much. If we did travel we could get some electric heaters as another poster mentioned. It's just me and my wife in the house so we aren't heating water for an army. We also keep the temp on the HWH down low to save $$. Our electric bill is around $75/mo. Our NG furnace is flaky. If I leave it set at too low a temp then the fire doesn't engage and the blower just runs (it gets plugged up). Often we would come home to a cold house - same as being away from the wood stove for too long. So, to make the furnace work while we are away I have to set the temp higher which is silly cause we aren't home. My electric HW heater is not very old and our electric glass top Kitchenaid convection oven (which my wife prefers over gas) is only a couple of years old too. How much would I really save buying new gas appliances and running gas lines to those appliances? I would need a flue installed for a HW heater as it is in the garage and the furnace is in the middle of the house.

The Natural Gas co does offer the ability to self report your meter reading through their website on the months that they do the "estimate". But you have to do it on the exact day they say, otherwise it throws the billing system off. Also, if the reading you report is "too low" in their opinion (like zero usage), they think you are not reporting correctly and just estimate you anyway, which results in time calling their customer service to get it sorted out.

Why should I pay $$ to stay hooked-up to a utility that I don't use? $10 per month = $120 a year. Same reason we stopped our garbage pick up. We are recycling a lot and hardly generate any trash so we canceled our trash service at the first of the year. That's another $25/mo bill gone = $300 a year. Also, we sold the TV (its nice and quiet at home now!) and didn't have cable anyway - most do - so thats a $40-50 a month savings ($480-$600 a year). We shut off the home phone at $40 a month so theres another $480 a year saved. Our car is paid for (we just have one). I also switched to DSL at $30 per month instead of the cable model at $60mo so that's another $360 a year saved. We get movies from the library for free instead of paying for Blockbuster or Netflix. As you can tell I'm cheap! Being cheap is a hobby of my wife and mine. We used to blow all kinds of money on all sorts of stuff, but we took a personal finance class and wised up to the consumerism / consumption economy society. Getting rid of the TV has been great as we aren't exposed to ads to tempt us to buy things or TV shows that make us feel like we need to buy things to buy up the the living standard of the people on TV. We also don't subscribe to any magazines or newspapers ($500 a year savings)!

Saving money is one of the other reasons I got a wood stove in the first place. I couldn't make the math work buying a brand new stove, be we found one used on craigslist for $300 (we would have bought a Harmon for $2500 new) and I got 9 feet of SS chimney pipe used for $100. I sourced all the parts I didn't get used from other local suppliers directly. I did the install myself saving another $500-$700 or so in labor and marked up parts from the installer.

Little savings here and there add up over time!

 

[Redox]

Let it go, then. It would never pay to keep it for cooking and hot water anyway. We have two kids and I wouldn't want them to "suffer", though they do seem to want me to light the stove all the time. Now, if I can just get the eldest to help me with the splitting, we will really be getting somewhere.

I, too, have resisted the call of Madison Avenue advertising and have taught my kids to look at commercials with a skeptical eye. I have resisted the urge for a new TV for years, but I gotta have my Discovery Channel. Verizon keeps pushing us towards FIOS (yeah, lucky me), but that's $1200 a year I can't justify. I do have a satellite radio (Sirius) because I drive a lot and think it's well worth the $13 a month to not listen to advertising. Never bought a new car; I can do a lot of repairs for what a car payment would cost. Maybe my neighbors (the Jones's?) think we're weird, but we are happy and living within our means.

Sorry to get off track here, but it really doesn't sound like you are going to be missing much by losing the gas company. Then, you can start thinking about going off the grid!!

Good luck

Chris

 

[RonB]

Sounds like you have made your decision. Go for it, and in a couple of years let us know if it was the right decision.

 

[clirvin]

I have two words for anyone that hates gas prices.....HEAT PUMP.

When we built our new house, we had a heat pump installed with a backup electric furnace. Nowhere in our home is a single gas line. Last month, our electric bill was only $165. Next year will be even lower, as we're installing a wood stove. The best part is that our heat pump has an automatic fan that we can run to circulate the heat generated by the wood stove.

I will never go back to gas!

 

[Highbeam]

Where's the risk? If you wish you could have your NG back then just have it restarted. No brainer. Nobody NEEDS gas.

You will be like the many of us that don't use petroleum at all in their homes. I have those little in the wall electric heaters to supplement my wood heat and have grown quite fond of them. I too have an electric glass top range and electric tank water heater. My lights and hot tub are electric too.

I wish I had gas to cook on and if NG was available then I would like to heat water with it but those are wants and not needs.

If you want to keep a furnace then you will find that an electric resistance central furnace is very cheap to have installed in place of your NG unit. Myself, I would have a few of the electric 220 volt wall heaters installed for a few hundred bucks and use them as backup heat if you're away on a trip.

 

[d.n.f.]

My old neighbours (they aren't old I just moved) have been off of natural gas for three years now. They heat with wood stove (Blaze King) and use electric for hot water. They have baseboard heaters in case they go away for the winter.

All those stupid fees, storage charges, transmission pipeline fees, etc.

 

[Beanscoot]

Well naturally the gas company is a bit outrageous. They have a monopoly on the gas supply to your house. That's one reason why I kept my fifty year old oil furnace when the gas lines were installed here. I can by my oil anywhere, and can get "used" oil from suckers who converted to gas.
I use less than a tank a year due to my woodstove.

 

[savageactor7]

We use to have a back up oil furnace...I love oil it's warm warm. My wife talked me into upgrading to LP a few years ago and It's not the same cozy warm heat as oil...but the die is cast and not I'm stuck with LP back up. Besides she'd have a fit cooking on anything but gas so I'm stuck...thank god I have plenty of wood to burn.