"The more I find out, the less I know."
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Weather at the Frozen North
This is my personal blog. My professional blog is The Customer Service Survey I've written a book called Gourmet Customer Service. You can buy it on Amazon. (in)Frequently Asked Questions AIM Screen Name: DFNfrozenNorth
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Last Updated: Aug 07, 2008 03:29 PM
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Thursday - April 27, 2006 at 02:13 PM inApril Gas Usage
Here's an update on our gas usage, since we got another gas bill today. For the month from mid-March to mid-April we used 39 therms of natural gas. Last year our usage (for the same average temperature) would have been 125 therms, so we saved 86 therms at $0.95/therm. The price of natural gas has come down quite a bit since the beginning of the winter; in November we paid $1.35/therm.
So for the season as a whole we've now saved a grand total of $1,023. Not too shabby....If we'd gotten the wood stove back in September instead of December, we probably could have saved an additional 100 to 150 therms of gas, or around $200 at the prices we were paying at the time. Just for laughs, I added a new column to my spreadsheet to calculate the amount of reduced CO2 emissions from not burning fossil fuels for heat. It came out to just under five tons of CO2 that we didn't add to the atmosphere this winter, or approximately what one of our cars emits in a year's worth of driving. So not only did we save a thousand bucks on heat, but we effective removed one car's equivalent of greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. Not too shabby. The heating season is now nearly over. Our main furnace has actually been turned off for about three weeks now. We've been lighting the wood stove only intermittently when the mornings are chillier than usual. I expect that we'll still post some small gas savings on our next bill, but unless we get an unseasonable cold snap, we'll probably only show another $10 or $20 of gas savings. My focus has now shifted to stockpiling firewood for next winter. I have a few sources lined up, and a few cords already put away (some of which is leftover from this year). I figure I need about ten cords stacked before summer begins in earnest so that it will have time to dry by autumn. Posted at 02:13 PM | Permalink | | | |