The Pain Of Heating With Oil

[BrotherBart]

"As Heating Oil Soars, Users Shiver and Cross Their Fingers"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/b...-surge-and-many-in-northeast-cant-switch.html

 

[hossthehermit]

But those in the futures market are warm in Aruba, right?

 

[gyrfalcon]

"As Heating Oil Soars, Users Shiver and Cross Their Fingers"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/b...-surge-and-many-in-northeast-cant-switch.html

Just horrifying.

 

[Dix]

It is horrifying.

And like they say, tou're trapped, unless you can find a way out. No NG here. Lucky we have city water available.

 

[gyrfalcon]

No NG within many miles of where I am, either. They're extending the line into the northern edge of my county, but I'm on the southern edge. I have a water line, too, but wow, it's nasty overchlorinated stuff pumped out of Lake Champlain to three bordering rural towns. When I first moved here, my cats flat out refused to have anything to do with it and I had to buy bottled water for them and gradually mix in the tap water until they got used to it.

The one year in the 6 I've been here, we had a very dry summer, and I was then really grateful for the water line since people's wells were going dry all over the place.

At this point, heating with electricity is probably pretty close to comparable with oil heat (at least in states like mine with reasonable electricity cost).

The maddening thing is that when I bought this place, I paid an arm and a leg to have an expensive super-duper high-efficiency oil boiler with hot water on demand put in, the cost of which I will never now recover since it only comes on a couple hours a night during the height of winter.

 

[amateur cutter]

Wow $ 2300.00+ per year that has gotta hurt bad. I feel for those folks. I wonder what the regs are for wood heat in downtown Manhattan. LOL

 

[begreen]

And they mocked Carter for warning of exactly this outcome.

 

[gyrfalcon]

Wow $ 2300.00+ per year that has gotta hurt bad. I feel for those folks. I wonder what the regs are for wood heat in downtown Manhattan. LOL

That's about what it was costing me in the oil price spike a few years ago, which we're coming back up close to now. In NYC apartments, the cost of heat is included in the rent, so you don't have a choice in the matter.

 

[Dix]

Heating this palace with oil @ 68F would cost me $4000 + per year at current prices. That's Heat & HW, as well.

No way Jose.

 

[pen]

What kills me is that the oil companies are telling us that my neck of the woods is the "Saudi Arabia of Natural Gas" yet, I'll never burn a damn drop of the stuff.

pen

 

[gyrfalcon]

And they mocked Carter for warning of exactly this outcome.

Did they? I wasn't paying attention at the time. He was right, as is Obama, IMO (of whom I am not otherwise much of a fan), in his semi-frantic push for getting green energy commercial development.

 

[Grisu]

And they mocked Carter for warning of exactly this outcome.

Did they? I wasn't paying attention at the time. He was right, as is Obama, IMO (of whom I am not otherwise much of a fan), in his semi-frantic push for getting green energy commercial development.

They certainly mocked the "Limits to Growth" and the Club of Rome. http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20090209/limits-growth-author-honored-once-ridiculed-warnings
But they were pretty much spot-on. We/our economy are addicted to growth but that's just not going to work on a planet with mostly finite resources. We are living in interesting times (a Chinese curse).

 

[jharkin]

And they mocked Carter for warning of exactly this outcome.

Did they? I wasn't paying attention at the time. He was right, as is Obama, IMO (of whom I am not otherwise much of a fan), in his semi-frantic push for getting green energy commercial development.

They certainly mocked the "Limits to Growth" and the Club of Rome. http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20090209/limits-growth-author-honored-once-ridiculed-warnings
But they were pretty much spot-on. We/our economy are addicted to growth but that's just not going to work on a planet with mostly finite resources. We are living in interesting times (a Chinese curse).

Even before the club of Rome, Hubbert saw this coming in the 1950s. But nobody wants to hear it. Sacrificing today for a better to morrow doesn't sell.

 

[MasterMech]

What kills me is that the oil companies are telling us that my neck of the woods is the "Saudi Arabia of Natural Gas" yet, I'll never burn a damn drop of the stuff.

pen

Sing it for me Pen!

 

[woodsmaster]

We used fuel oil when I wsa a kid and I hated it. I had to become a repaire man to fix the allways messed up oil gun.
Are tank was outside and just when you needed the heat most the fuel would gell and you had to heat the tank to get heat.
Needless to say I wouldn't put in oil heat if it was .50 cents a gallon.

 

[Pallet Pete]

We are piped in the cities natural gas and when we used it in between stoves about 3 weeks the bill came in at 339.77 ( for three weeks of the cheapest gas ) :shut: This is why we put in a wood stove

Pete

 

[homebrewz]

That's about what it was costing me in the oil price spike a few years ago, which we're coming back up close to now. In NYC apartments, the cost of heat is included in the rent, so you don't have a choice in the matter.

I'm all for alternative forms of fuel, but efficiency and old heating systems are a part of the problem too. In some of those buildings the heat has two settings, on and off. During winter, someone I know in the city frequently has a couple of windows cracked to keep the place comfortable.

 

[PapaDave]

Nat. gas here when we moved in......don't use it except for heating water.
Did a little test about a month ago when we were having warmer temps than normal.
I needed to repair a storm door, so I took it to the garage/shop and turned on the heat (92% eff.).
It was on for 10 hours at 55 °F . Extrapolating the numbers gave me a monthly bill of close to $400. The garage is better insulated than the house, and the furnace in the house is less eff. too.
I'll not pay that during the coldest parts of the year and still be uncomfortable.
I'm really glad the stove was here too, even though it's an older, less eff. model. My cost for the whole winter, heating with wood, is less than what that one month of Nat. gas would cost.
Nope, not gonna' do it.

 

[certified106]

What kills me is that the oil companies are telling us that my neck of the woods is the "Saudi Arabia of Natural Gas" yet, I'll never burn a damn drop of the stuff.

pen

Same here pen, I even have my natural gas line ran down to the road within ten foot of my neighbors line that is hooked up and Columbia gas told me it would be around $10000 for a tap on the line. It gets me pissed off just thinking about it Needles to say I don't have natural gas and probably never will at that price.

 

[gyrfalcon]

That's about what it was costing me in the oil price spike a few years ago, which we're coming back up close to now. In NYC apartments, the cost of heat is included in the rent, so you don't have a choice in the matter.

I'm all for alternative forms of fuel, but efficiency and old heating systems are a part of the problem too. In some of those buildings the heat has two settings, on and off. During winter, someone I know in the city frequently has a couple of windows cracked to keep the place comfortable.

No question. They have to keep those systems on roaring in order to get the heat all over those huge buildings. Most of them, though, come to think of it, are NG so they may be getting a bit of a break these days as the NG prices keeps dropping. It's smaller apartment buildings in dense urban-suburban areas that have tended to use oil.

 

[jharkin]

Actually a lot of those old buildings in NYC still burn heavy bunker oil - The think stuff you need to preheat that used to be common in large ships, etc. Very dirty too, full of all kinds of heavy metals. There have been articles in the NYT lately about efforts to convert them to #2 or gas.

 

[gyrfalcon]

Actually a lot of those old buildings in NYC still burn heavy bunker oil - The think stuff you need to preheat that used to be common in large ships, etc. Very dirty too, full of all kinds of heavy metals. There have been articles in the NYT lately about efforts to convert them to #2 or gas.

Something I didn't know. Thanks. The ones my various friends and family members have lived in over the years have all been gas. In fact, my late uncle's building blew up rather spectacularly years ago when a gas line going up the side of the building for some reason exploded and tore the whole outer wall off the apartments. (He wasn't hurt.)

 

[MasterMech]

Actually a lot of those old buildings in NYC still burn heavy bunker oil - The think stuff you need to preheat that used to be common in large ships, etc. Very dirty too, full of all kinds of heavy metals. There have been articles in the NYT lately about efforts to convert them to #2 or gas.

Hey now there's an idea, bio-mass heating! And it would help two of NYC's problems!