Northeast To Be Home Heating Oil Hell?

Source: CBS News

Despite recent drop in crude oil, the cost of home heating oil averages $3.13 a gallon. The steep price tag is putting unprecedented pressure on consumers and the companies that deliver oil in the Northeast, CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports.

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That's grim news in New England, where eight million families (50 percent of the households) heat their homes with oil, which is now averaging $4 a gallon at retail.

And it's not just oil. Natural gas is up more than 25 percent from last year and electricty rates have nearly doubled.

"It's really scary. This is really going to devastate the middle class in ways we're just understanding," says Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association.

Eugene Guilford represents 400 of Connecticut's mostly "mom and pop" oil dealers. Many, he says, are now caught for the first time in a credit squeeze -- stuck between soaring oil prices and banks leary of loaning the millions of dollars needed to buy oil wholesale.


Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/11/cbsnews_investigates/main4339423.shtml

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I have an oil furnace and I'll tell you I am as nervous as hell.

when he leaves the apartment to steal a wooden plank from a fence...

We heat with natural gas. We're thinking of getting a fireplace insert. I can't imagine turning the thermostat lower than 60 -- that was fairly uncomfortable, though we seemed to acclimate pretty well after a couple of months.

I worry about it too. Cold is particularly hard on the young ones and elderly, and for them I worry the most. :(

and I paid less than that a month. This year my plan is just under 200.

How big is your house, if I may ask? We're just about 1000k sq. feet.

We knew the bills were going to be high as they've been growing at an alarming rate. The prior winter when we were between 66-68, for instance, monthly bills were over $300. Before we turned the furnace on this winter we set the therm. to 60 and it stayed there all the way through.

It was brisk but bearable. I can't imagine going much lower though. I swear I saw my breath in the shower one morning. :)

A friend who has a big old drafty house kept his at 50. He is a stronger person than I. :)

If you don't have a source for free firewood I don't think it will save you money.

what we saved in the cost of heating oil paid for the stove the first year. I can't imagine even trying to pay for heating oil ever again. We just don't have any way to afford the financial burden. I fear for this country - it's going to get desparate very soon.

put up a windmill or solar panels and convert their house to electric heat? What's that you say, it would cost $50,000? Oh, well just so we don't use any of our own natural resources. I'm sure Granny can just put on another sweater. /snark

alternatives NOW before the situation gets more desperate. And, by the way, most solar roof systems are around $17,000. My state offers a $10,000 rebate, so that makes it fairly affordable. That still won't heat a whole home, so we need even more technological advances. If you think that we can drill our way out of this, you're freaking insane. It's take 20 years to get oil on the market from any new drilling projects. Find a way off the drug instead of prolonging the pain-although Exxon-Mobile and the gang won't like it. They made over 11 billion in PROFITS last quarter. He who controls the energy controls the world-and owns your bank account.

But here in NE solar is impractical. Last winter I burned 1200 gallons of heating oil. It would take a lot of solar to equal those BTUs, plus the need to retrofit my heating system. Not to mention solar panels dont work very well in our short days, cloud cover, and under two feet of snow.

skies to use solar PVs or solar water heating. As far as the snow goes, that's what a brush is for. Lots of folks in snowy places have solar power.

Your winter days are no shorter than anybody else's at your latitude.

Guess you'll have to learn how to conserve, like the rest of us have been doing for years.

Hard to brush snow off the roof of a 3 story house. I'd appreciate if someone could point me to a site where I could calculate the real cost of converting my house to full-solar energy. I think folks are grossly underestimating the cost.

What is the cost of storage batteries to provide nighttime lighting?

What is the cost to convert to baseboard electric heat or forced hot water (if using solar hot water)?

What is the cost for some sort of heat sink to provide hot water at night?

What is the necessary footprint for full solar power (I live on a small 1/16th acre lot)?

What are the yearly maintenance costs?

What can I expect for average amps/btus generated hourly and by month of the year?

Use PV to LOWER electric bills rather than eliminate them. Google grid intertie.

B) You don't have to put the PV on your roof. They have in-ground posts you can mount a bank of them onto that track the sun.

I know this much and I'm a frickin' veterinarian. You need to do some homework of your own, maybe go to that Midwest Alternative Energy conference they have in WI every year, hook up with local alternative anergy contractors.........you know - think outside your box.

but honestly my electric bills are the least of our problems <$75 a month. The payback from PV just isn't there. I looked up PV for residential heating on the Bob Villa site and it stated clearly it's not sufficient for home heating. They recommend passive or active solar, but that means rebuilding your house essentially - creating a big sunroom on one side with lots of heat storage in massive concrete walls/floors or barrels of water, etc. Ive seen designs like this and admire them, but I live in a 95 year old house and rebuilding it seems a bit excessive. Why don't we just use some of our resources - 1 Trillion barrels of oil in oil shale as an example.

Like I wrote to my congressman (Neal) we need cheap heating oil, old folks in my relatively poor city are going to literally freeze to death this winter unless the prices collapse.

electric bills so low. Heck, I average over $50 a month in my 1-BR apartment in Los Angeles that obviously has NO INSULATION. Between the heating bills in our long cold winter this past winter, and the godawful heat that requires months and months of AC, I am getting reamed and there is nothing more I can do to lower costs except suffer.

Fortunately I can afford $50 a month. But who knows where costs could go?

What little we have left should be in emergency reserve for that day when Middle Eastern oil is a thing of the past.

I'm thinking you won't last long here, given your smartass attitude.

Release one-tenth of the Strategic Petroleum reserve. The amount of crude oil in it, as of one month ago, was 773 Million Barrels. Earmark the vastest amount of that for distillation into Heating Oil, the rest into petrol and diesel. Set a target price per gallon for heating oil. If, in a presentable period of time, that target price is not met, release more crude and drag the profiteering scumbags into congress and the courts by their leprous balls. Make it quite clear that if the oil companies don't step up in this situation and do their duty to their fellow citizens, The Hammer of The Gods will smite them beyond their wildest imaginings.

And for those who don't think that people freezing in their homes is a strategic crisis that might be facing the nation, I have a suggestion: Get thee hence and commit fornication unto thineself. Amen.

and Amen!

.
.
.

y'all can freeze and starve before the PNACers's will take one drop of fuel away from their empirical War Machine

right?

There are 773 million barrels of crude oil in the SPR. 10% of that is 77.3 million barrels, or 3.2 billion gallons of crude at 42 gallons per barrel. According to the EIA, a refined barrel of crude yields 23% heating oil. So by refining 10% of the SPR you would end up with abut 750 million gallons of heating oil. A family uses about 1000 gallons per winter, so 10% of the SPR, refined into heating oil, would keep 750,000 homes heated for the winter.

According to the OP there are 8 million homes in New England that heat with oil. So 10% of the SPR would keep 10% of those homes heated.

Look at it from a cost perspective. If 10% the SPR could be refined into heating oil, and that oil supplied to New England homes only for a quarter the price of commercial oil (cause you still have to pay for the refining, right?) then using 10% of the SPR would reduce the cost of the average gallon of New England heating oil by 7.5% for one winter.

Using 10% of the SPR to drop heating costs of one small portion of the country from $4.00 a gallon to $3.70 for one year might be looked on as an inappropriate use of national resources by the rest of the country.

The SPR is not intended to form part of an ongoing energy policy. It's a stopgap, intended to get you through an emergency that will ultimately be solved by other means. I agree that the New England heating oil situation is an emergency, but so is the entire energy situation of the USA. I don't see any efforts under way to address the problem over the long term, which means that if the SPR is opened up now the same problem will just reappear later on when it's exhausted.

I have no suggestion for the long-term solution to the oil crisis, because I don't think there is one. IMO what we're seeing is the inevitable market turbulence caused by tight supply. If that's true, then the only long term solutions are to conserve as much as possible, shift to different, less expensive, locally available forms of energy, or migrate to warmer climates. In other words adapt to changing circumstances rather than mindlessly trying to preserve Business as Usual. Adaptation could be helped by short-term measures like opening the SPR, but that will work only if such adaptation is identified as the long term solution to the crisis. So far no such suggestions are being made.

What would be the long-term effect of forcing oil companies to give up some or all of their profits as you have suggested? Wouldn't that put a crimp in the industry, and ultimately make the problem worse? Why not bite the bullet and nationalize your energy resources as other nations have done? Then your government could simply direct that oil be sold to the public at $1.00 a gallon or whatever, as they do in Iran, Iraq, Venezuela etc.

Keeping the strategic reserve filled is about the only decision on which I've agreed with GW. Tapping it now isn't in our long-term interests any more than offshore drilling. It's going to be expensive, but we've got to come up with government heating oil assistance AND insulate every home to the max AND develop alternative energy sources. ASAP.

If the Russia / Georgia war gets uglier resulting in a cut-off of overseas oil people will regret not having it.

Just curious.

with lows around -20 and highs at 0 for about 35 days and then sometime in March the high get to 20 above - but basically 4 months of evilly cold days and deathly cold nights - 1500 square foot well insulated 1 1/2 story farmhouse -

about 800 gallons

:hug:

550 - 600 gallons. And since I'm not home during the day I usually unless the weather was well below freezing had the thermostat turned all the way down during the day and usually only turned it up just before going to bed.

Also near Pittsburgh. Three-bedroom, two-story older house that's been retrofitted with extra insulation and new windows. We're thinking of getting an electric fireplace insert like someone upthread mentioned. That way, we can use it to heat the living room where we hang out and leave the rest of the house much cooler.

but we only moved here to connecticut in mid-december, so we didn't even have the entire cold season!

the house is about 2,700 sq.ft. and the furnace is a brand new energy star model.

to keep a 1700 square foot house at 65! and that is in southern Maine.

It obviously varies with the type of house,
the size of the house, the amount of insulation,
the outside conditions, and the amount of solar
gain, but...

In our old house (typical seventies-style "split
entry" two story house, typical R13/R19 sort of
wall/ceiling insulation), we had a 1,000 gallon
underground storage tank; it used to last us
about a year. This seems consistent with the
stories we hear of people filling their more-
typical 275 gallon tanks "three or four" times
each winter.

But even back then, the cost of oil heat was
usually higher than the cost of gas heat so
we eventually converted. Pushing us along in
this conversion was that because we had a
1,000 gallon tank, the dealers would forget
about us and several winters along the way,
even though we were on "auto delivery", our
tank ran dry. We finally added a run-time
meter to the oil burner so we could estimate
how much oil was in the tank. (We burned
0.75 gallons/hour when the heat was running.)

But we were much happier and financially
better off after our switch to gas.

Our current house has always been heated by
gas and has much more square footage, but it
also has better insulation and much more solar
gain so it burns about the same amount of gas
as the old house did after the conversion.

Tesha

that replaced what we used in about 3 months of spring/summer, so that was just showers, washer, and dishwasher. (not even our dryer, which is propane).

in the winter we can go through that much in about 3 weeks! yikes!

This was for kerosene but oil prices weren't that much lower.

This is going to be a horrible winter as far as heating oil prices go. I hate to admit it may literally be a killer.

These amounts are as much as gas for a car, and harder to avoid. We are facing a problem, my friends*.

*my new favorite phrase.

It's not big, but it was built in 1750 and has practically no insulation. There's no way we can afford to heat it this winter, with oil being even higher.

We're in the process of buying a newer house.

Adding insulation and other winterizing of the home, perhaps getting a radiant heat wood stove or pellet stove installed, adding a solar heat or geothermal system to replace the old oil/gas system if you can afford it. Maybe focus on just making sure one room has an alternative heat source if doing the whole house is beyond your budget. Build an outdoor sauna room to heat your body up (as they do in the northern climates of Europe). Be creative.
Etc.

Perhaps even discuss alternative emergency plans with neighbors or family in case things get bad.



I don't think the middle class is exactly a priority to Bushco...except during elections.

getting 10 full cords, maybe 12

got 125 gal heating oil last month - cost us approx $400

last year my partner was home most of winter, (she was laid off in September and couldn't find a job) - because of that we heating with wood 24/7, used less than 200gal of heating oil for the winter season, went through 11 cords of wood

she's working a temp job now, suppose to end around beginning of October, but they may extend her "contract", if so then we'll be using more heating oil during the day hours to keep the house temp around 63-65

if any "economists" want to know where our disposable income is going - it's going for heat and gas for the car

we usually take a week-long vacation every year, and 2-3 "weekend trips" - not this year, extra money is stashed away for wood and oil. Christmas is going to be extremely lean this year too

our furnace to a 95% efficient unit. Will it help? We will see.
I must mention that it was time to replace, our old unit was 30 years old.

I can't imagine what all of you facing the heating oil prices. This country must do something NOW, we can't wait.

I'll be doing spot electrical heating to minimize furnace usage - it's going to be rough though.

I would recommend getting the programmable thermostats if you don't already have them. Also, consider adding zone heating if you don't already have this - only heat where you need it the most.

You can let even the bedrooms get a lot colder
if the bed itself is staying warm. Our programmable
thermostats turn the heat down to 55 or even 50
overnight.

Tesha

you have animals that sleep with you. In the instruction booklets for the blankets it says they create "hot spots" which can ignite a flame!

...sleeping on top of them; it's doubtful a cat or
even three dogs in the night would change the
equation much.

Even electric blankets have similar technology
including distributed thermostats that shut them
off if they overheat.

Tesha

why the manufacturer's warnings? A bullshit disclaimer? Don't think so! And we were talking electric blankets NOT mattress pads! Try reading before you type!

And nowadays, the three pages of disclaimers that come
with every product more threatening than a toothbrush
are written by lawyers attempting to indemnify their
client (the manufacturer) against every possible
hazard, real or imagined. It's gotten to the point
where they commonly disclaim *THE ACTUAL INTENDED
USE OF THE PRODUCT*.

o http://www.snopes.com/humor/business/warnings.asp

(And thousands of other web pages)

So maybe you'd better heed the warnings and not plug
in that electric blanket at all? Oh, and don't smoke
while using it because that could cause it to catch
fire too.

Tesha

I won't be using one! I tend to heed those disclaimers. And, I never smoke in bed!

mattress pad or blanket. Not a good idea.

Try having claws kneading on one and see how long they last!

my brother's electric blanket did, indeed, start a fire. The firefighters' best guess was that it was tucked in wrong. There were no reasons that anyone could see that it would have done that -- the blanket was only a couple of months old and had been in good working condition before that. I wouldn't go near the things after his experience! When I lived in the Northeast, a wonderful and incredibly warm down quilt did the trick and I wasn't worried about fires.

are wonderful! Both light weight and warm and definitely a safer alternative!

By the end of last winter they were paying almost $5/gal to heat their house. And this is Minnesota so keeping warm is kinda a necessity...

I mean, we deal with all the heat in the summer, but we average the 50s and 60s most of the winter here in Texas. I can't imagine trying to make it warm in our house with temps like ya'lls. We just throw a few more blankets on the couches and beds really.

today on the radio! Hype? Maybe. But it's daunting!

was killing me. I am scared to open my electric bill.

I've gotten my old house insulated but it's still an old house. This year I'm going to buy some insulating curtans. Also looking into this for my attic fan:

http://www.batticdoor.com/atticlouvercover.html

Does anyone know if this helps and works well?

It doubtless stops drafts, but a well-functioning
set of louvers (with all the various foam bits still
intact) isn't that bad to begin with. And please
remember that, appearance aside, the exact same
effect can be achieved with 10¢ worth of polyethylene
sheeting and (maybe!) some staples or tape.

In our old house, the attic fan was installed in
such a way that we could easily remove it and
set it aside; its louvers could then be very
easily blocked from above with a piece of
cardboard cut to size or some such, although
we always figured that our louvers simply
sealed "well enough". (We actually had more of
a problem with them opening sufficiently when
the fan was running at low speeds; we ended up
playing with arranging counter-balancing springs
to help them "open up".)

Tesha

We have old aluminum louvers that don't seem to move. I'm not sure they can be replaced without the fan. I'm gonna check on that. Newq ones might open more when they need to also. The fan can't be removed. What I might like to do is find the equivalent of this product but just in its cheaper raw form - a sheet of vinyl covered foam and a lot of velcro.

We had the same problem with heat escaping through the aluminum vents of the attic fan. Our heating bills were nearly $400 a month back then. I bought 2 sheets of plywood, made a bottomless box just the size of the fan assembly to put around the fan, insulated the outside of the box with R25 insulation, made a top for the box and insulated that as well. In the winter I keep it closed and during the summer simply remove the top when I want to use the fan. The next winter our monthly heating bill dropped by over 50 per cent. I figure I've paid for the materials a hundred times over since then.

for an older house. Open them when the sun is shining, close them as soon as the sun shifts.

If you have storm windows, try this as well: Get hold of some plastic and line the inside face of the storm window. We used that heat shrink type. It really made a difference for us.

I realize that's a totally unrealistic suggestion for most of you, but I know that in Connecticut there is actually a "snow line" about ten miles inland, where the dubious warmth provided by the ocean stops and real winter begins (it still gets brass-monkey cold along the coast, just not as often). I actually got to see it once, somewhere in northern Stonington, where the snow line literally cut across the road and adjacent fields.

The difference was notable enough to the aboriginal residents of Connecticut that tribes were willing to fight large and comparatively brutal wars for that coastal real estate (not, however, comparable to the type of war that the Europeans brought with them). The Pequots and the Narragansetts were the current victors when the Puritans arrived, but then the Puritans promptly Bushed up a couple of wars in order to take that same territory away from them.

it will cost us to heat the house this winter.

And we don't even keep it close to what most people would consider as warm.

(But I'm not really whining; we only have such a big house because I decided I wanted my offices in the house. Plus, we won't struggle TOO had to pay for it. I feel REALLY sorry for others in New England, though.)

Redstone

hopefully it will last the season!

as he can, but he might have to move his father in with him because he can't afford to heat both homes.

and talking about moving in with me! Maybe we could hook them up!:rofl:

feet, and goes barefoot most of the year. He also loves he herb. He's extremely smart, was a spook for the Army and is a big supporter of our veterans.

call for desperate measusres!

a very smart beautiful daughter. He raised her right.

What the hell is a heater ? :D

I was in central Florida once for a frost warning and you'd have thought it was the end of the world--people were throwing bedsheets over the landscaping and bundling up in hats and mittens. One of the local TV stations preempted regular programming for the weather emergency.

Y'all can take the cold, but we can take the heat and humidity without wilting or even sweating :P

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Is oil the most efficient means of heating? How much does electric radiant flooring cost in comparison and in efficiency? I've always read/heard that radiant flooring was the best means of heating other than things like passive solar.

most comfortable, but in different regions the cost heating with electricity is far higher than using gas or oil.

It's kind of like how the Persians used "wind catchers" to send hot air down into their cisterns and then circulate that cooler air throughout their dwellings :)

Pester your elected officials to do something about this problem, and when they don't, you can always keep yourself warm in the pitchfork and torch mobs :P

Are there any organizations out there to help allay the costs for people? Such as ones that we can donate to?

Go into someone's home, a store, work or a restaurant and the a/c is blasting. Also, you never see anyone outside, sure they are driving and such, but where are all the people playing, having bbq's or hanging out in their yards? Only time I see any of my neighbors outside is when they are mowing or head for their mailbox or cars. The heat outside is easy to take if your inside a/c all the time.

and goes belly up? Not having a means to distribute oil is as bad as not having oil.

Here in Asheville and higher elevations of NC, heat is required for 7 months out of the year (useage varies between 200 to 800 gallons per year) and oil/kerosene was historically the reliable cheaper source of heating fuel for those with no access to natural gas lines. So even in parts of the South, the current price will deplete a lot of savings and cause hardship. Electric rates are scheduled to rise steeply this winter too and the high cost of installing a heat pump is prohibitive for many people or cause them to go into debt further.

My dog's groomer (Dirty Dogs of WNC) said she paid something like $500 to fill her tank last year. Glad she was finally able to sell her house!!! I have a heat pump. I don't think electric prices will rise that much this winter, though. Progress Energy has asked for a 16% rate hike but from what I've read, it'll be phased in over time. I think it'll be relatively affordable this winter -- I won't vouch for next winter.

For the oil to heat a small Cape Cod with the thermostat set at 66. I am so very glad we moved.