As some of you may have known, we spent 2 weeks snow-birding in Florida, specifically, Orlando and the Keys over the Christmas break. I can highly recommend the Keys to anyone, especially Key West if you're heterosexually challenged. If not, uhm, leave once the sun goes down unless you like mental scars.
Anyway, back to business.
So, gone for two weeks. I turned the water heater off, turned the heat down, closed up the house and left. Prior to that we burned wood to keep warm. Imagine my surprise today when I got the heating bill which was clocking in at $230. Sure, the weather was piss-poor (and I missed a white Christmas for Oregon in lieu of palm trees with lights -- not the same!). Still, I am highly miffed over this, and I did what any other reasonable man would do in the same circumstance. No, it didn't involve cleaning guns and mapping out exit routes at the nearest NW Natural Gas station although truthfully that did cross my mind. But, instead I went outside and chopped wood and built a fire. It is still burning brightly.
We had a similar issue like this last year, same time. We left for a week, turned stuff off, and came back to a $200 bill. We balked last year, they sent out a tech, he determined there wasn't a gas leak, and that prompted us to lower our "room temperature" to a unforgiving 63 degrees. My wife didn't like that, but money is apparently more important than heating. For this winter, we beefed it up to a sultry 64 degrees. It was cold. We do need to replace the 20 year old windows, but my wife has industrial duty curtains on them already. Plus, we're still paying off the roof, and, erm, vacation.
The interim plan is thus; we've replaced nearly all the old light bulbs with mercury-laden environmentally energy efficient versions in hopes to lower our electric bill so we can get a space heater! And build more fires. I wonder how much NW Natural gas would like a fire...
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OUCH> if it makes you feel any better our gas bill is up that hight too and it DOUBLE from December to January. In fact, it MORE than doubled. So at least you know you have company in the "miserable and cold" category.
We have the same problem... Although my husband being a total Nazi, doesn't let our heater turn up past 55 degrees.
It's pretty sad when you can see your own breath in the morning... Thankfully our fire place does alright with heating. I would imagine though, that if we replaced our 50 year old windows we might keep a bit of the heat in better.
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