Winter and Heating

 After last year's winter that wasn't, I was thinking that this winter was the real thing, a real New England winter. Last night I read that of the last 118 winters  in Massachusetts  for which records have been  kept, 105 were colder than this year.

Since December, we have used nearly 500 gallons of oil. The default setting on our thermostats is 51F. We crank them up to 63 when we are sitting around and even to 66 if we have company. Wool socks, sweaters, and fleece get lots of use around here. This is as it should be. It makes a lot more sense to insulate two or three cubic feet of person, than overheat 2500 cubic feet of house. In any case its healthier: less dry throat and bronchial passages to be irritated and infected, fewer germs in the air, etc.; and it makes it easier to enjoy the outdoors when your body has adjusted to lower temperatures.

We had been having issues with a small propane stove which looks like an imitation wood stove. We used it only rarely, for appearance as much as heat, so we were surprised that we used 100 gallons of propane over the year. When I asked, the propane company said the pilot light should only use a fraction of this, so they would check for a leak. They found no leak, but when we continued to use gas at a rate of more than two gallons a week, I asked them to change the tank. They did this still, finding no leak. I had also checked with Jotul, the manufacturer of the stove, and the outfit that sold it,  about pilot light gas usage. They refused to answer. Finally I found a few sources, including a Canadian government site, that indicated that pilots for this type of stove could use from 600 to 1500 Btu s (that's 600,000 to 1.5 million Joules for the SI fans) per hour.  A gallon of propane provides about 90,000 Btus of heat, so in a week, 168 hours, a pilot can burn from 1 to about 2.5 gallons. Mystery solved.

At $3.20 per gallon our pilot light was wasting $300 per year as well as using resources and adding to the CO2 problem. Consequently, our pilot will stay off except when we use the stove. Many suggest that keeping the pilot on prevents corrosions and other problems, but I have not seen any real evidence supporting this.