Posted on 10/16/2007 12:23:48 PM PDT by 1Old Pro
250 GALLON TANK = $785
That's enough for about half an upstate New York Winter.
Just 8-10 years ago it was 75 cents a gallon.
You can do less driving, hard to do much less heating.
This will hurt retail sales in the Northeast as discretionary income will be used more and more for high fuel costs.
Wood stove.
Yeah, they can be kind of messy and difficult if the wood pile gets buried in snow, but it sure can help cut heating costs.
We moved a couple years ago and I miss mine.
It’s what you’re used to. I was in SC this last week and it got into the upper 40’s one night. You’d think it was the North Pole the way people dressed the next morning.
Many communities ban wood heating because the smoke can prove unhealthy and violate Environmental Protection Agency standards. (Oklahoma refuses to take such measures.) High-sulfur coal in Pennsylvania is worse; take the example of Donora (Washington County), where several people died from sulfurous smog air pollution in 1947. In the future, the government will disallow most or all carbon dioxide emissions, and you Yankees will freeze in the dark. Well, maybe not, but it’ll be brutal all winter without any decent heating sources.
Yeah, it was South Carolina.
Funny thing is, the older I get, the better becoming a snowbird looks to me. Not SC though; too dry and too much sand. I don’t want a lawn that looks like a beach growing grass.
My oak only costs me gas, oil, and an occasional chain saw servicing.
Bought my house out here in the woods 16 years ago - cost $500 a year for oil - now it will be over $1500.
I'm an old gramma - I've been splitting kindling and lugging in wood so far this fall, cause it's going to be a lot harder, come deep winter, to struggle thru' the ice and snow for wood.
I must save the furnace heat for dec-Jan-Feb and then struggle with the wood again...and then, come spring, repaint my walls!
I guess next year, I'd better get this guy hitched up...
You are so right! Why didn't I think of that?
Oh, wait, I live on a pittance of SS - must have misplaced that extra $800 I had lying around...
Our local fuel supplier who has supplied coal to the area for over 100 years, just stopped carrying coal.
I suspicion that is going to spread.
So if you have a coal stove AND access to coal - get a supply in.
We always loose power some time or the other during the winter - house cools down real quick without a wood stove.
Back in the Ice Storm of 1998, I was without power for 19 days!
No Flush! (cold in them thar woods, it was.)
Wow - that's cruising! 
Everyone in the USA couldn’t fit into Florida :/
Well, guess maybe I aughta get me a herd a cows - or maybe more moose. I hear from these here enviro nuts that them farts cause global warming...
Better go unhitch Buster and get 'im in the house...
I’m sorry, but the politicians who plan to ban fossil fuels then will turn their attention to cattle, which the Moral Authority of the United Nations calls the leading polluter in the world. So no cattle either. Our future is bleak and bland.
I don’t think all pellet stoves are electrical.
I would think where you are (given your 19-day loss of power before) that you have a generator now. You could power the stove off a small generator or a larger house generator.
Great post!
A BOTE calc : If you had a 2 ft layer of high density urethane wrapped around your 1200 sf 3 br house(walls, ceiling, floor or about 4260 sf of R = 168)the heat loss would be about 1000 BTUH with outside 32 deg F/inside at 72 deg F(dT = 40)(not counting windows, doors, infiltration). The human body at rest generates about 1200 BTUH. Thus you would heat your house w/body heat alone.
You put an extra quit on the bed for winter, yes? Thus retrofit INSULATION outside your existing walls/clg/flr would do WONDERS for your heating bill. Instead of feeding that obese HOG : BIG OIL, contact your local INSULATION contractor as to prices vs payback period...
I understand what you mean. I lived in NYC until I moved to WV about six years ago. I’m old enough to remember coal deliveries to our home there back in the 40’s. When I arrived here, the smell of coal burning brought back some long dormant memories.
The hair on the back of my neck still stands up when I get that first whiff of wood smoke at the start of the heating season. For most all of my life, that aroma meant that someone didn’t have a place to stay that night.
Should I work harder so that the government can forcibly take more of my money away from me and give it to you????
In a field one summer's day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content. An Ant walked by, grunting as he carried a plump kernel of corn.
"Where are you off to with that heavy thing?" asked the Grasshopper.
Without stopping, the Ant replied, "To our ant hill. This is the third kernel I've delivered today."
"Why not come and sing with me," said the Grasshopper, "instead of working so hard?"
"I am helping to store food for the winter," said the Ant, "and think you should do the same."
"Why bother about winter?" said the Grasshopper; "we have plenty of food right now."
But the Ant went on its way and continued its work.
The weather soon turned cold. All the food lying in the field was covered with a thick white blanket of snow that even the grasshopper could not dig through. Soon the Grasshopper found itself dying of hunger.
He staggered to the ants' hill and saw them handing out corn from the stores they had collected in the summer.
Then the Grasshopper knew:
It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.
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