How are you handling the heating season coming into full swing?
>> Wednesday, October 29, 2008
I was in class tonight and my professor made a joke about the weather...he is originally from Pennsylvania (gets cold there) he comes from an Amish/Mennonite background. He moved to Boston for several years and moved here within the past year. His comment was, "does anyone lay in bed at night and see their breath?" We laughed at him. A student behind me yelled out turn your heat on man! We didn't talk more about it but it made me wonder why he hadn't turned the heat on yet. He is married and has three young kids. Could it be money, background or something else?
What do you do? When do you turn your heat on? I was in training the other day and one of our guest speakers said he doesn't turn his heat on until November. I have turned my house heat on but not our bedroom heater. Our bedroom has electric heat and it gets very warm so we just use a small plug in heater until it gets really cold. My husband is a heat addict...he loves to hit the up button. Our family room is often freezing and so we have lots of blankets to keep us warm. (Blankets...see my blog below)
So winter is on the horizon and we all need to save some money on the bills so tell me what do you do to help keep the heating bills down?
These are some things I do in my house:
- I put plastic sheeting over the windows in my house that have the most problems with breezes.
- I try to make sure rugs are up against the doors that have breezes coming under the door.
- I try to go behind my husband and turn the heat back down right after he turned it up. I am sneaky like that :)
- We use our fireplace. (I admit I hate to use it because I am terrified of a house fire)
Any ideas I can pass along? Don't be shy.
3 comments:
We just barely turned on our heat in Northeast Wisconsin and our house is old with bad windows. We bought heated mattress pads this year for our two boys and always make sure they are in warm jammies. One trick my husband and I do is fill a Nalgene water bottle with boiling water, wrap it in a towl and put it at under our comforter at the bottom of the bed. It radiates heat throughout the bed all night! We used to do that when went camping and now do it at home!!
My husband and I bought an energy-star thermostat (just means it's programmable) for $75 at Lowe's. We can program it to be cooler during the days we're gone or at night, and to come on in the evenings right before we get home. Saves us a lot on our heating bill.
We also just got more insulation sprayed into our attic (we live in an old house). Between the power company and gas company rebates we'll get back, it will cost us $0 out of pocket and will help keep our house warmer!
I thought about the heated mattress pads. WE do have a program thermostat and that does make a big difference.
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