{"id":1468,"date":"2007-11-26T09:30:50","date_gmt":"2007-11-26T17:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/2007\/11\/26\/frugality-in-practice-keeping-warm-in-winter\/"},"modified":"2024-03-05T12:10:07","modified_gmt":"2024-03-05T19:10:07","slug":"frugality-in-practice-keeping-warm-in-winter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/frugality-in-practice-keeping-warm-in-winter\/","title":{"rendered":"Frugality in practice: Keeping warm in winter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cold cold cold<\/span> \u2014 I am cold<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\"\"Remember George Bailey’s “drafty old barn” in It’s a Wonderful Life<\/i><\/b><\/a>? Our place is like that. This 100-year-old farmhouse is cold<\/span> all winter long. There are drafts at the doors, there’s inadequate insulation, and we have 30 windows in 1800 square feet. (Our old house had eight<\/i> windows in 1400 square feet.) Every year, we do a little more to make this place energy-efficient, but it’s a losing battle. In order to stay warm, we surrender to our heating bill.<\/p>\n

(Our house is so drafty, in fact, that the previous owners had a separate furnace in the kitchen. During the winter, they sealed off that room and basically just lived there.)<\/p>\n

The Cost of Comfort<\/h2>\n

Yesterday I decided to calculate how much we actually spend to stay warm.<\/p>\n

Between November and February of last year, we paid $675 to the gas company. That’s an average of $167.20 during each of those four winter months, or about $5.53 per day. According to the gas company’s website, about 61% of the typical home’s gas usage goes to space heating. Our home is not typical. I think it’s safe to estimate that about 75% of our gas usage goes to space heating, especially during the winter. That means we’re paying $4.15\/day for heat.<\/p>\n

As part of our effort to keep costs down, we use a programmable thermostat<\/a> to automate the furnace. When we’re away (or asleep), we keep the temperature at 54 degrees Fahrenheit. When we’re home and awake, the thermostat defaults to 64 degrees \u2014 though we often bump it to 66 or 68 (or even higher, if we’re really cold<\/span>).<\/p>\n

What this means in practice is that:<\/p>\n