I debated whether this is a Long Term Preps topic or not, but I guess it's just a shootin' the breeze topic.

With winter approaching and oil prices at half--half--their peak prices from just this summer, I was wondering if there were any folks that made changes to their heating plans and now regret it. Doing things like signing heating oil contracts that lock in a certain price or buying a new wood-burning stove. I know that the sales of wood-burning stoves was going through the roof earlier in the year, but I imagine that oil prices and recession fears have really cut into sales lately.

I don't know how much lower crude prices will help people who use heating oil. The biggest price driver for gasoline/diesel/heating oil seems to be refining capacity rather than crude prices.

I haven't made any recent changes; my wood stove with natural gas furnace is a reasonably effective combination. I am watching the pellet stove market closely. It seems that the commercial pellets are in short supply and sometimes not even available. When they make one that can handle chipped wood, which I can make myself, then I'll make the investment.

There's a big up-front cost to installing a wood or pellet stove. They payoff is long-term, unless there's an outage on the grid of course, in which case it's priceless. I'm not sure how many people have that kind of cash available. The used market, however, should start to boom.

Nope.

Still am - as planned, and prepared - using wood.

At the fire hall, we opted to NOT lock-in a price, and decided that we'd cut back and even alter the structure of the station to avoid high oil costs. Glad that decision was made.

Speaking of winter heating, I just read that the US is banning the import of untreated firewood from Canada. All firewood must be heated to 160 degrees for 75 minutes to kill infestations of invasive insects species that may be present in the wood.

No - Insulation is always a money saver.

Don't know either, but I've been watching the HHO price at my usual source daily and it seems to be dropping in lock-step with crude prices.

I tanked up at the end of August when the price dropped a bit and felt smug when the price went up in September as expected. Now I'm almost tempted to turn up the thermostat in order to use up enough fuel to make room for the 150 gal minumum order!

As far as I know, refining capacity is normal right now after the hurricanes and the demand for gasoline is also decreasing, so I don't think there's any lack of refining capacity for heating oil. Oil supply is ample, too, so I think the big driver of heating prices is simply crude oil prices for the moment.

~2/g for propane right now for our soon to be back-up source of heat.

Primary source of heat wood stove.

I'd still love to have a pellet / multi-fuel as primary with a 5 day capacity hopper, and 12v back-up to run it, and a propane for backup/additional heat, and my wood stove in the garage to heat it and back-up for the house. Someday

Funny how different standards are from one area to another.

I think the code minimum here in OK when I built my house 6 years ago was R-19 walls and R-36(?) ceilings. We opted for spray-in insulation in the exterior walls (>R-30) and R-49 in the ceilings (very inexpensive upgrade).

My new house has 2 layers of something.... all I know is its about 8" above the joists and looks like my attic is a play-area for an itchy-scratchy animal fun fest *gasp*... L O L.

My only regret is that I can't afford to heat my house to a comfortable temperature. That regret is because the house i rent has more wind than Chicago blowing through the windows. Yup, I spent last winter with the house a balmy 58 degrees. 52 at night. Ask my girfriend - it is was chilly!

So, since my house is heated by NG, I might, MIGHT, be able to afford 60 or 62 degrees this winter! Thank goodness!

No actions were taken by me earlier this year.

Thank goodness my contractor warned me about wiring through the spray-in insulation, because I hadn't thought about it. Since he brought it to my attention we wired every room for just about everything. Funny, now that wireless networking is common, we haven't had need for much of it.

A couple items that might help are outlet insulation (~1/8" thick precut foam to stop drafts) and window film (similar to plastic wrap) that is taped in & contracts with a hairdryer to be almost invisible.

Well, the VT AG and Secritary of State has said that is you locked in your oil price this summer, you have signed a legally binding contract. Oops.

Thanks, but way ahead of you there! In fact, the plastic over the window in my hall actually "billows" in the breeze. Not so bad once it's shrunk with the hairdryer, but a bit disconcerting to watch it while loose. Yes, it did help a lot!

And the plastic wrap keeps the breeze off wet hair in my bedroom.

I kind of would like the basement windows sealed better, as well as the seals around the doors - old and dry foam for the most part. The kitchen door can be a bit breezy too, but some additions last year helped.

I just made another post on putting silicone in the spaces in the framing of your walls too small for insulation. Not an option if you do not want to tear sheet rock off of your house. One of the guys spraying the foam insulation suggested it. I think one could use silicone in any a number of places in a house.

I have a few spaces in the framing that I need to get resprayed. I'm a nightmare for a contractor, because I inspect everything regularly. However, if they miss anything, I'm filling it with Great Stuff. I don't think I'd want to self-help and fill all of my walls with it, but one might use it to address some key areas.

Before the house was gutted, I used the plastic wrap for a drafty sliding door. It helped, A LOT.

I also sealed off a drafty window using a crown duct roll. It basically thick aluminum foil with a sticking adhesive side and some insulating material inside. See: http://www.knaufinsulation.co.uk/products/crown_rolls/crown_duct_roll.aspx

I've at times been able to pick up styrofoam in decent quantities that was otehrwise going to be thrown away. If I was hard up in a cold winter, I could see making use of such sheets. It might look awful, but it could keep me warm.

Finally, part of my bug-in plan is to use tarps or plastic drop cloths to make rooms smaller in effect. If you go camping in the cold, the tent feels pretty warm in the moring, just from your own breath. Doing something like this to cut down on the size of some areas might be an option near the last resort.

Interesting stuff about the crown duct roll. I saw something like that in the basement, left by the landlord. Maybe I'll fiddle around with that sometime this month.

My "option of last resort" was to schedule my 2 ICU months in Jan and Feb - I figure that I'll be putting in 12+ hours, 6 days a week, which means less time that I'll be home (and thus need to heat the house).

I'm so cheap. LOL

Thanks everyone for the good ideas, I do appreciate them!

I honestly don't recall for certain, it may. Maybe someone on here will know for sure.

We didn't go too crazy on the wiring. We did Cat5, standard phone lines and coaxial cable to most of the rooms except for the dining rooms and bathrooms.

The builder didn't soak us too bad for the wiring but it seems like each builder has things they like to jack the price up on. Our builder wanted a fortune for fancy plumbing and soundproofing. I did the extra soundproofing myself for about a tenth the price the builder wanted & we had faucets and basins changed after we moved in for about a third of what he wanted. Then we donated the (almost new) fixtures to Habitat for Humanity.

Just curious, but do you mean that you put the soundproofing in the walls yourself while they were still being constructed?

What happens when the customer does want to keep their old pipes? After all they are theirs and not the plumbers pipes.

I’m sure most people don’t care and are glad to get rid of what they see as junk and a hassle to dispose of.

I tend to keep things and build stuff (it’s a curse) so It would be hard to get it away from me. Over the winter I’m planning on building a good sized solar water heater out of salvaged copper pipes and other parts I have.

I was wondering if a person keeps the old item, do contractors quote a higher price? And do they make it verbally clear that they get the old parts, or do they wait till the end of the job and point out the contract was singed to allow them to take old parts?

It seems a little (lot) less then honest to do so.

Exactly. After the house was framed, wired and inspected I put soundproofing inside all the interior walls. IIRC the cheapest solution was R-13 Kraft backed insulation between the studs which worked out to about $100 per thousand square feet of living area.