Kris and I own an old house. During the winter, the cold air seeps in through cracks in the windows and beneath gaps in the doors. We've done what we can to keep our heating costs low, and we make a handful of additional improvements every year, but I still feel like we're living in a “drafty old barn” (to quote George Bailey).
Sometimes all of our hard work goes for naught. For example, we recently hired contractors to repair some rotten siding. As they were working, they discovered this:
This heating duct leads to an upstairs bedroom. Note how the duct itself has pulled away from the funnel-shaped bit beneath the floor register. There's a two-inch gap where the hot air was escaping. For the past several months, we have essentially been heating our basement. Kris and I could have gone for years without noticing this; to see the gap, we would have to look straight up while walking down the steep basement stairs.
My heart sank when the contractor pointed out the problem. I wondered how much this had cost us.
You'll recall that I've automated some of my bill payments, including our natural gas. In theory, I'm supposed to check the statements every month. In reality, I haven't done so since I switched to automatic payments last spring. Because of this, I never knew there was a problem. Checking the statements now, however, I can see that we've used a lot more energy in 2009 than we did in 2008.
- January — 2008: 98.3 Therms ($124.23), 2009: 144.7 Therms ($213.07)
- February — 2008: 120.5 Therms ($156.95), 2009: 146.6 Therms ($208.23)
- March — 2008: 104.5 Therms ($133.71), 2009: 128.8 Therms ($181.36)
During the first three months of 2008, we used 323.3 Therms, which cost us $414.89 (or about $1.28 per Therm). During the first three months of this year, we used 420.1 Therms, which cost us $602.63 (or about $1.43 per Therm). We used an additional 96.8 Therms this year, an an increase of 30%. Wow. Using that cost of $1.43 per Therm, that's an additional $138.42 we've paid for heat.
Here's a screencap that shows a graph of our energy usage:
There's no way to tell exactly how much of our increased heating bill is due to the gap in the ductwork, but my guess would be “much of it”. (I guess we'll find out next winter.) It's true that I've been working from home this year, but I worked from home in March 2008, too. And I don't mess with the thermostat. When I'm cold, I don't turn up the heat. I bundle up.
Once again, I'm encouraging you to learn from my mistakes. Make a periodic check of your heating and cooling system to be sure everything's functional. And if you've set up automatic payments, be sure to check your statements on a regular basis.
Author: J.D. Roth
In 2006, J.D. founded Get Rich Slowly to document his quest to get out of debt. Over time, he learned how to save and how to invest. Today, he's managed to reach early retirement! He wants to help you master your money — and your life. No scams. No gimmicks. Just smart money advice to help you reach your goals.
I am living in India. And here is very Hot… We have to do same exoenses but after Air Cooling Systems…….!!!
It was also an unusually cold winter here in PDX. We too saw a jump in our heating bill in December, January, and February, just because the heater had to kick on a lot more often even to maintain low temps.
I had a similar problem (drip in tub – but hot water drip). I saw my gas bill getting higher but since all my bills (electricity, oil, etc.) had been going up I didn’t look into it. I finally did I noticed how much our usage had gone up (only use gas for hot water and stove). Fixing the drip cut our bill in half!!! If only I’d seen it sooner….
The green in me is sad for earth that so much energy was wasted. But there isn’t much green in me so I’m just glad you caught the problem and will save a few bucks.
Ouch, J.D.! Thanks for provided an honest example of why automating too much can end up costing us money. We had this exact situation happen in one of our rentals. Luckily (or not so luckily), the heating bill went up about 75%, so it was hard for me not to notice right away!
You should look into putting some insulation around those ducts if they are running through an unconditioned (basement or attic) space. That will save you some money down the line as well.
Think positive– the problem was found now, not later . . .
Excellent and easily forgotten tip, J.D. I love the convenience of automatic payment and paperless statements, but it does lead for many of us, myself included, to skip the step of poring over the details of the monthly paper bill. We had a similar mishap a couple of years ago with our water bill. At some point in the late fall the water hose at the back of our house had been used and coiled up and put away, but the water hadn’t been turned off at the spigot. Since the hose had a spray nozzle and was already coiled… Read more »
This is the exact reason I have refrained from automatic bill payments. I know myself well enough that I just won’t look at the statements! However, I realize I am missing out on the rewards that would accrue by funneling bills through my dividend credit card. So far, I haven’t been willing to make the change. Fundamentally, I don’t care for the idea that these businesses can “pay themselves” incorrectly and it is up to me to notice.
We recently had a home energy audit done by a home inspector that uses thermal imagining. Besides things that weren’t much of a surprise, he found a huge insulation gap in our attic ceiling that has been costing us for sure, plus discovered that builders only insulated half of our crawl space. We’ll be fixing all these problems this spring and I’m sure we’ll see big benefits during next year’s cooling and heating seasons.
It stinks to get news like that, though it’s good to go ahead and get it fixed. Our house is 45 years old and when we bought it 5 years ago the heat came from a large oil (read expensive) furnace. We couldn’t get over how much oil we were going through just to keep the house warm. It cost us a fortune that first year. We had some contractors come out to price a new, more efficient furnace. In looking over our system they found large gaps in the duct work in our crawl space and one area that… Read more »
JD – I agree it was great to find the broken ductwork, but you *should* be slightly heating your basement anyway. Any HVAC folks will tell you its best to heat in layers, so you want some heat in your basement otherwise you will be overheating the upstairs to compensate and your floors will feel cold and damp from condensation. Remember hot air rises. If you don’t heat your basement, I bet the first few inches of the first floor are very cold, which is a pretty ineffective way to heat. Plus when they are cold, they will draw the… Read more »
Kris is a scientist. When she read this post, she complained loudly that my scientific method was lacking. “We don’t know that the gap was the cause of our increased energy bill,” she said. “We’d need to compare the temperatures outside between 2008 and 2009. Plus it could have been other things.”
She’s right, of course. She always is.
I decided to run the post as-is, though, because I (in my non-scientific way) believe that the gap in the ductwork is responsible for the increased energy usage. Plus, I really should be checking my bill online every month. 🙂
We just found out that exterior landscaping from the prior owners has resulted in a sunken porch corner and bowing foundation wall. We’ve been in the house two years and only just noticed what was going on when we had to replace the furnace last year and converted from gas to oil (the big oil container was placed under the same corner). We removed the problem (railroad ties trapping water toward the house), but we’re stuck with a somewhat obvious aesthetic imperfection. Unless we want to shell out $30,000 to excavate and rebuild the wall. My solution is $40 of… Read more »
In Milwaukee, our bills from We Energies combine our gas and electric charges. We pay by check but are on a budget plan in which our payment is the same amount each month even though our actual cost is higher or lower. What I love about our budget payment is that the monthly amount gets adjusted twice a year based on estimated cost and our useage (just went down from $322/mo to $209/mo for the next six months), AND it includes a chart and a graph that show our useage for the month compared to the same month last year,… Read more »
I agree with JimZ #12. Heat in a basement is not what I consider wasted heat. Perhaps your upstairs bedroom didn’t have the flow of air it has now, but the basement likely benefited from the “leak”, unless it is the kind of basement where the wind blows right through it! So, don’t beat yourself up too bad J.D. I’m betting your bills would’ve been the same whether that duct were attached or not. It was a long, cold winter in most parts of the country.
We insulated our 100+ year old house (near Boston) this past November. We had no insulation to speak of and lots of cracks in our fieldstone foundation. It was painful to write the checks to the contractor, but WOW have we seen savings in our gas utilization. I ended up canceling our balanced billing, because we had been overpaying so much that we ended up with a $1k credit on our account. It will take a while to pay for itself, but I feel better now that we’re not paying to heat our basement, attic, etc.
I live in Las Vegas and about twenty years ago my wife and I sold a house we had lived in for about 5 years. We loved the house except during the first summer we noticed the south west part of the house-where the kitchen was-was always hot. When we outgrew the house and decided to sell it, the buyer wanted a home inspection and when the inspector went into the attic, he noticed the vent to the kitchen had been disconnected and was cooling the attic. It is then that we remembered we had a guy in the attic… Read more »
What if we are renting? How can we help change the amounts we are paying on heating and cooling without spending a lot of money?
I doubt that the duct problem caused the higher costs, though it did probably cause you to be colder in that bedroom. After all, you don’t mess with the thermostat. The increase in your bill was probably just do to the cold winter and increased energy costs. On the positive side, just think how cozy you’ll feel next winter when the problem is fixed. Thanks for all the great posts. I am the stay-home-mom and “financial manager” for a family of five in Bend Oregon. I’ve been reading GRS for a few months now and you’ve really helped me to… Read more »
JD – One way to head things like this off, and to set up a gee-whiz pretty cool way to monitor your usage in the future is with an energy tracking device. My dad installed one a few months back and is happy with the results (he is an analytical nut like me). It’s expensive around $140 but may pay dividends if it makes us pay more attention to our usage, find ways to conserve, and find problems like your duct disconnect sooner. It attaches to the fuse box and transmits usage data through your electric lines to a readout… Read more »
Shelli says: “After all, you don’t mess with the thermostat.”
Though if the heating unit has to stay on longer to reach/maintain the thermostat temperature because some of the warming air is going elsewhere, then I’d think that would affect the costs.
…be glad you found that leak now rather than later! I’m sure many people in older houses have leaks that go unnoticed for years.
Here’s my graph – http://www.davedarling.com/gasusage.png (I love my gas supplier – their online account provides two years worth of history with graphs)
You can see that we managed to cut our gas bill significantly this year – I did a massive insulation and heating system upgrade under a Canadian government program (eco energy retrofit).
The savings are going to add up for years to come, and I got about $8000 back for my efforts (spent about $12,000 total, so only $4000 out of my pocket). I’d highly recommend that any Canadian with an older home look into this program.
At least in Pennsylvania, winter 2009 was colder than winter 2008. Up through February in 2008 there were 4,114 degree days here. And up through February in 2009 there were 4,747 degree days. That’s about 15% more heating to provide, which might explain some of your bill difference.
It is easy to figure out if you are using more energy this winter compared to last – lookup the degree days on your utility bills. Then you can figure out a therm/degree days (or is is degree days/therm?) to see if efficiency has dropped. Of course that won’t prove the leak caused the drop in efficiency.
You attribute the higher heating bills to this disconnect in the piping, but if the house is old, chances are, the disconnect didn’t happen just within the last year. Many other factors could be the cause of the increased heating bill. Additionally, just because you have something-anything on autopay doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be keeping an eye on the bill somewhere. You don’t need to log into the utility’s site to findout how much your pay every month. Check your payments via your credit card statement or checking account. I have some on auotpay and some aren’t. Don’t trust… Read more »
I am a dinosaur who still receives paper utility bills. I like to review the utilization chart. Every few months I clip one from the bill and put it in a file, so I can stay on top of our electricity usage. I do comparison checks on a year over year basis. Monitoring it pays off. After we got our new computer last winter, I started using the PC while watching our new-to-us giant tv. And over the winter months I noticed my electricity usage was up over last winter. As a result I’ve buckled down, either watching tv or… Read more »
We have been closely monitoring our electric bill for about 3 years now in an effort to cut down our bill (after we got an unexpected $600 bill one month)! By looking at it every month, it has really caused us to change our behavior. In the last 12 month period we saved about $1200 over the previous twelve month period!
D’oh! I think you guys are the only Oregonians I “know” who even have a basement. Probably a good idea NOT to be heating it — an unheated basement is great for root vegetable storage.
Studies show that sitting in a cold room burns more calories. Think of it as a way to diet.
We had a similar thing happen with our electric bill (unfortunately during a time we were incredibly busy/traveling a lot so it took a while to be resolved). We had gotten our usage down to bare bones (to save money and to be greener) at $45/month, when ever so slowly our electric bill started creeping up again. The first month it went from $45 to $60 (“Hmmm…well maybe we had the computers on longer last month”), the second month it went to $95 (“Okay, something must be wrong – let’s look into getting one of those watt-hour meters and see… Read more »
I was just commenting to my family about how the last two months have been great for energy savings. This past summer, my heat pump (which also serves as air conditioner) broke. I had the option to repair a 15 year old system for several hundred dollars, or replace it for several thousand. Since I was in a good position to do so, I selected the most efficient system and replaced the old one. Ever since, I’ve been comparing electricity usage and cost to the previous year each month. And every month, I’ve saved some money. In the last two… Read more »
Does your bank have a notification/email option? I have automated my bills (all through USAA) and i get an email when the bill is paid. They include the amount, dates, all other pertinent info. It helps because i tend to forget to check on the automation too! You may want to look into it.
We’re just finishing up another cold Michigan winter (of course, now we’re into another cold Michigan spring!) and another winter of NOT sending a single dollar to the energy company for heat. I cut, haul, split, stack, and burn all my own wood from our acreage, and although it’s an incredible amount of work, I find it satisfying on several levels. First, of course, is the fact that rising energy costs don’t cause me much concern. Second, during a particularly cold spell, or even a colder than usual winter, we just burn more wood – it doesn’t cost us any… Read more »
I didn’t read all the posts but I noticed our energy usage (and costs) were up this winter compared to 2008. I didn’t think the weather would have that much effect but that’s the best explanation I have.
Wow. Been reading your blog for ages and this is the first time where I actually feel good about my practices when compared with you – I check my auto-pay statements. 🙂 Its a relief to remember that even *you* make mistakes. Phew.
That might not be the only reason your bill was high. Our electric company raised our rates over 12% this winter. It was also an especially cold one too. My bill was easily $100 higher than I’ve EVER seen it.
I had a similar problem with water in the basement of a rental property my wife and I own. Conventional wisdom says you should always get at least 3 bids. We got two and both had quoted us at about 2k to fix the water problem. When I was about to grudgingly pony up the extra money – my wife wisely said, you always say to get three bids – so we got the third one. An older man, around 70, looked at the basement for 5 minutes and said, you just need a little quikcrete by that doorway, you… Read more »
We have had an unusually cold winter here in the midwest which resulted in the use of more natural gas, yet my heating bill has been lowerdue to reduced natural gas prices. I am not sure how much of your increased bill can be attributed to the ductwork. Unless your thermostat is in the room where the ductwork was heading. I have had to heating and air contractors tell me that closing off registers to unused rooms does not result in any less usage of energy. The only room that matters is the room where your thermostat is. The upstairs… Read more »
Even in a newer home you can have problems with heating air conditioning, and water usage. I have started with a walk through and around the house every three months. I am in Florida so we do not deal with snow, but I deal with the effects of salt water. This last walk through I found a leak in the hose bib I had replace two years ago. unsure why it is leaking as I have not used that one recently. Temporary repair is a hose cap until I cant get to the store tomorrow on my weekly errand day.… Read more »
We had the same thing happen with one of our heat ducts, but it was in the attic – that’s worse. We put it back together and sealed it up with some metal duct tape. It’s a good idea to go over the ducts visually once or twice a year, you never know what you may find.
J.D. – As busy as you are, new blog idea!
GetGreenSlowly!!
Dave, I registered that domain last June. 🙂
Interesting article about paying attention to automatic bill paying and how it may have triggered you to have found this on your own sooner. However I agree with Ragnorok that based on your statements there is no way you can make this comparison and state that the duct is the cause of your increased heating bill. This defect could have been in place since you moved in, a year after, two years, etc. Additionally you didn’t check average temperatures over the time period to see if you “needed” more therms. My possibly faulty recollection is that this has been a… Read more »
Since I’m in grad school, keeping track of bills is especially useful, as there isn’t exactly a surplus of money to around. In the first three months of ’09, my gas bills were $58, $59, and $71 respectively, or $188 in total. My April bill, however, was $39, and since turning the thermostat four degrees down (from 70 to 66), I’m hoping my May bill will drop below $30. The warmer weather should help too.
Watching the numbers is a good way to minimize the amount of money one spends.
did you notice in your post about keeping heating costs down you noticed the extra heat in the basement, but you thought it was from uninsulated pipes?
Just like #27, how do you know when the gap happened? If it didn’t occur sometime between last year and this one, then you actually could have been paying for that leak for years…!
How’s that for good news?
Thanks, everyone, for your comments and suggestions. I hadn’t actually noticed that in the previous post I wrote about the basement being warm. That’s startling, and does tend to suggest that the gap might have been there for a while.
As for how the gap came about: we don’t know. We’ve had plenty of construction done around those pipes, but it could have been cats, too. The cats LOVE to sneak into the basement, and I can just picture one of the little rascals sitting on the warm ductwork while they wait for us to realize they need back upstairs…
Misery loves company, LOL. Some years back, I had a critter, probably a possum, get into the crawl space and detach a heating duct. It was pretty noisy, so it didn’t take long to detect the problem — being able to look down the floor vent and see dirt below was the dead give-away! But getting into the mostly-sealed crawl space to fix the duct was another matter. I was just more restrictive in my heating until I could fix it. If it had not been for the noise, the problem probably would have gone undetected for much longer. As… Read more »