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Claudine M Jalajas

Writer, Web Developer, Decorative Painter

I'm a tired, worn-out mother of three young children. I never really fully appreciated what being sleep deprived was like before my children--and I now believe it is a valid form of torture. I live on Long Island with my husband (who I rant about frequently) and three little angels. ;)...

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Is Anyone Else Scared?

Claudine M. Jalajas

We have a boiler which means that we heat our home and water with oil.  Yeah, that stuff that keeps going up at a ridiculous rate.

Each year we burn about 1,100 gallons of oil.  We burn oil in the summer as well since that is what heats the water.  I looked into having a hot water heater installed but was told it wasn't a good idea for two reasons:

1. It's against code.  The boiler is downstairs and the water heater would have to be upstairs and you can't have one higher than another.  Or, the heater would have to be downstairs and then it would be too close to the boiler.  Or, something I can't remember but sounded dangerous enough that I let the whole thing go.
2. Although it's running in the summer to heat water, it doesn't really burn that much oil and it's bad to shut a boiler off completely anyway.

We don't have natural gas lines out this way so even if we wanted to consider replacing our heating system (KaCHING) it isn't available anyway.

Last winter was a mild winter and yet we still froze our butts off here.  Part of that was because half of the house was literally exposed most of the time.  Kind of like heating the house with all the windows opened.  Actually, it wasn't kind of like that--it was actually that.  I couldn't wait to be roasting in my non-air conditioned house this summer after spending months wearing 3 sweaters at a time and still freezing.

So now I'm sitting here wondering if we should consider installing some other type of heating system because to be honest, I'm kinda freaking out.  Should we have a fireplace installed?

My oil tank is a 250 gallon tank.  I usually have it filled when it gets nearly empty(there are greater discounts for larger quantities).  Two winters ago I would get it filled and the price per gallon was well under $2.  Still, pretty rough writing that check every couple of months--but it was doable.  Towards the end of last winter the prices were up over $3/gallon.  So, I started biting the small discount and getting just 100 gallons at a time.  I figured this was a good way to stretch out our cash flow.

A friend of mine said, "Yeah, but I heard it might go up to $6/gallon."  I got out my trusty calculator.  Hmm... 1100 gallons times $6/gallon. 

I'd better stock up on some wool sweaters.