The Renewable Energy Blog

Boy, the last couple of years energy prices have left me reeling. I dusted off my wood burning stove and invested in a couple of electric space heaters. See, my home has 3 heating zones: Main, Bedroom and Basement. 

The basement is set at 45 to keep the pipes from freezing. Can’t change that too much. But without kids yet, my wife and I only use 1 of 3 bedrooms, so I’ve reduced the heat to 57 degrees in the bedroom zone and use a space heater to keep our room at 64. 

The rest of the house–living room, kitchen, dining room and bathroom–are kept at 60 degrees except from 7-9 am and 6-11 pm when I let it go up to 65. When we’re home I start up a roaring fire in the woodstove to stop the oil burner. The main hallway gets up to 72 and heat transfers all the way down to the bedroom. Sweet! 

Last year I didn’t use the wood stove. Why? I hadn’t had my chimney inspected since the stove was last used and I didn’t trust there might be a blockage and burn the house down. That would have only kept use warm for a few hours at most. (Check your chimney at least once each year!) Actually, only heating one half of the upstairs last year saved me $300-400. I suspect this year will be somewhere around $600 saved at least, and that includes spending $175 for a cord of wood. My electric usage only increased $150. 

My oil company has me on a monthly budget of $214 which also includes $300 for a maintenance program. So they expect me to be paying $2100 for oil? Nope. Not at this house. I’ll be taking myself off the budget plan next month. 

This is my way of sticking it to Big Oil. Electric utilities use a mixture of oil, natural gas, coal and renewable resources for power production. This coupled with wood burning is just my small part to cut back on oil. Many consumers even have the option of going completely green by opting to use only wind or solar power. Here in NY we have the www.powertochooseny.com site where we can make that choice. 

How do you save money on energy? Do you have any alternatives you’d like to share? Send me a post!