Out of season
It is the middle of January. I am very cold.
After the mid-December shock of the first heat bill in a newly purchased townhouse, the heat was turned down.
Way down.
Even before the economy measures took place, downstairs was an uncomfortable place to be. Hardwood floors are only pretty when your feet are warm.
Without heat running for all but two or so hours a day, downstairs feels like Michigan on a sunny but chilly winter day. In other words: not warm.
Upstairs is more tolerable in that it seems to get a little warmer, and cool down more slowly. But when I take a shower, my shampoo is moving toward solid, and I often warm the bottle under the wonderfully warm water before attempting to lather my head.
That’s also the way I warm my hands: in the shower. The water does not get hot right away; it’s often too much trouble to wait for the water to get hot before washing my hands. So instead, I wash my already cold hands in freezing water.
Then I got it in my head that a space heater would solve all my problems.
Or at least one downstairs, because it’s so cold down there I’m afraid to go down in the morning in just socks and warm, fuzzy pajamas. It’s like an expedition to the Arctic: hat, mittens, parka, cell phone in case I have to call for help. OK, just kidding. Not that dramatic. But cold.
I think it was talking to the next door neighbor that did it.
“Are you keeping warm?” she asks in the middle of the coldest freeze in Fresno since 1998. (The one that is destroying most of the fresh citrus crop for the country. If you wonder why your oranges are going to be so expensive, this is why.)
I have no energy to put a gloss on it, to try to be optimistic to a woman I’ve only talked to once before.
“Not really,” I say with a grimace as I sort through mail at the mailbox with barely warm hands.
“Yeah, these townhouses are hard to heat. They’re hot upstairs and freezing downstairs.”
A glimmer of light dawns far in the back of my torpid mind.
“Really? I thought it might just be us. We’ve tried everything. The heating bill is twice as much as it was at our old place, which also was a townhouse.”
“Really?” the neighbor says back. “That’s weird. No, it’s always like this. I have to get out a space heater for when my mom comes.”
“We need to do that,” I say, deciding this is the answer. “I’m tired of being cold all the time.”
Work, which is normally a frigid place all year, is the place I expect to be the warmest. I also treasure my 10-minute hop to and from work, so I can blast the heat in my car.
It’s probably one of those things the seller doesn’t talk about when trying to unload their house. We did ask the seller what her heating bills were, but we frankly didn’t believe her. We figured she was heating it to 90 degrees and dancing about naked.
I guess it’s one of those things they don’t tell you. Prepared to be surprised about many things. Prepared to not use your gas fireplace even for 15 minutes on Christmas because it will cost too much. Even though that’s all you could think about since buying the place. Just one fire on Christmas.
So we went out to buy a space heater a couple days later, and found out they’re considered a seasonal item, and as such, they’re nearly gone.
Probably not because it’s colder than it has been here in almost a decade. But just because it’s out of season.
It’s January. It’s fucking cold.
I need a space heater. The lackey at Lowe’s sounds incredulous that we should even be asking for such a thing. “Well, I guess that’d be in seasonal, if there are any left. I doubt it.”
He was right. Plenty of grills in the space that the heaters should be. Plenty of outdoor fireplaces. Totally useless in January, unless you want to get a start on your summer barbecuing plans.
I’ve always object to seasonal selling. Or rather, I think you should still be able to buy sandals in August or a sweater in February. Yes, the season is ending. But what if I’ve broken or ruined my sandals? What if I’m still cold? I don’t want to see sweaters in August. I can’t even think about touching them, let alone try them on.
I think it’d be reasonable to still be selling space heaters in Fresno, especially still in January. By February, I can see the argument against them. In a few weeks, spring will begin for the region. My fingers might thaw by then.
But until then, I need a space heater.
So we head down to The Home Depot, where we’re directed a little more helpfully to an end cap. There’s like two or three left, the employee says.
It’s a little more than that, but the selection is not good.
We settle on something less than optimal. I wanted something ceramic, something less likely to set my cats on fire. But all they have is a shoddy looking floor model without its advertised remote, that also looks like someone used it to play football.
But what’s this? A model marked $29 (which rings up at $23) is still in a box. It’s the last one in a box of the small models we’re looking at. But it has a automatic tipover switch; if one of the cats knocks it down, it turns off.
We snap it up, deciding to stop screwing around, especially since there are some people hovering behind us, trying to get at the space heaters. We could order exactly what we want online, but I’m cold now and I say that the idea of buying a space heater right now is the only thing that’s been keeping me alive these last couple of days. I also don’t want to have to live in half a house: cold downstairs in the winter, and hot upstairs during the summer. I’m going to live in the whole house since I’m paying for the whole house.
Bring it home, set it up, and then I notice that someone appears to have used it and returned it. Perhaps for the whole damned winter until now. There’s a couple of stainlike spots on the top of the heater, and the cord has been suspiciously bundled back up in an unfactory-like way.
But I don’t care. I will be warm soon, I tell myself.
Well, the space heater did take the chill off. I found that if I sat in the corner near the space heater, I didn’t feel as if my fingers were going to fall off. I didn’t even need my customary blanket.
But over in the dining area a few feet away, it’s still colder than Michigan on a sunny winter day.
My cats also came over to investigate, and I had to shoo them away. I don’t object to them sitting in the small aura of warmth, but neither do I want them igniting whiskers.
I feel sorrier for my cats than I do myself (and that’s saying something.) Their paws are cold, and they stick to me like a magnet because of what little heat I might give off. Yes, they have fur, but it only goes so far. They can’t put socks on.
I also don’t know what effect the space heater will have on the combined gas and electric bill. Only time will tell. By this time next month, I could’ve turned into an icicle. And then I won’t care.
Sounds rough. So are the heating bills high for your neighbors, too? Did your home inspector look at the furnace, or do you think it should be checked again by a repairman?
We lived in a townhouse for a year a several years ago, and it had the same problem. It was a nice place in summer, but man, that house was cold in winter. Even with the furnace on, barely a breath of warm air rose out of the vents downstairs. Upstairs was a little better.
It turned out two of three heating elements were burned out in the furnace, but even after replacing them the house was still freezing cold. The furnace still didn’t heat it efficiently. After one year, Lynn said she couldn’t live there any longer, especially with a baby who had been born in the meantime, and so we moved.
Here are some things to think about, from the Whatever It’s Worth file: How old is your place? How old is the furnace? Did it get inspected? Have your air ducts ever been cleaned? Has the furnace filter been replaced recently? Any or all of those could help get more heat out.
And hey, it could be 15 degrees out and snowy, like it is here. Make you feel any better?
One thing about buying your home–and I hope we all warned you about this–they cost money even after you get a mortgage. I think we’ve spent money on our home in some way or another every month since we moved in. Latest ordeal has been the dishwasher. The water pump went out, so we have a repairman who is working on that this week. He says it will only cost about 60 or 70 dollars.
A furnace repair will be considerably more. I hope it doesn’t come to that for you, but you definitely don’t want to suffer. Maybe any cost would be worth paying for warmth.
I don’t know whether the furnace was physically inspected during the inspection. It’s on the roof, which is hard to get at. I’d have to look at my file. The guy was pretty thorough.
It’s also from 1998 or 99 … so it’s not ancient in terms of furnaces. We just replaced the filter a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know about the ducts, and how long ago they were cleaned.
I think we were trying to see how far we could cut the heat bill by making some changes before calling someone out.
A heating/air person is probably the next step.
Our old townhouse was not this cold. Nothing approaching. There might be a number of factors involved … we’re not sharing any living walls. It’s 300 square feet bigger. It’s constructed differently. There’s probably more.
Not only did I talk to this neighbor, but a co-worker’s daughter also lives here and we got her to give us her numbers on how much she spent on gas and electric. Not that much on gas, and more on electric. But now we think that’s maybe because she uses her space heater a lot.
The good thing is that we got a home warranty with the mortgage, so if anything breaks, we can get it replaced for the cost of the deductible, allegedly.
But what that probably does not cover is the initial visit by a person to figure out what’s going on. That’s what’s going to cost.
We did know that yeah, it was going to cost some money to maintain a place. I just didn’t think it’d hit so soon, where it hurts the most, with the heat.
I naively thought we’d be done for a while after the whole dishwasher/disposal debacle.
I just want to be warm.
Your furnace is on the roof? You crazy Californians. I’ll bet the folks back in Michigan have a good time laughing about that one: “Yeah, they say out there in Cali-fornia, they have their furnaces on the roof. Can you believe that?”
Most people’s heating and cooling’s on the roof. Haven’t gotten an adequate answer why. They think you’re nuts when you ask. (ha!)
Of course we knew the house was going to continue to cost money after we bought it. Duh. Cars do, clothes can… why would a house, as intricate as it is, be any different? We’ve had two bills. the first was for 8 days. I didn’t feel that I could speak with any kind of authority to a heating and cooling service based upon 8 days. I tried that with PG&E, and they told me to set the heat to 55 degrees the entire day. (Thanks, guys.) That, and apparently it’s common knowledge that somebody gets screwed when the gas is turned over to someone new. But we’ve just gotten a second bill for 31 days. And though it was still about twice what we paid at the old place, it was far less than what we were on track for according to the first bill.
So yeah, we’re going to have heating and cooling people out. But it probably won’t do much good. At least we would’ve tried.
Dawn: It’s 15 degrees outside. What’s the temp inside your house now? Here it’s 57.
And one of the attractions to the place was that everything–including the furnace, cooling, and water heater, washer, dryer, stove–was relatively new.
I have the thermostat set at 65 for the early morning and the evening, then 62 for the daytime. Weekends it’s 65 during the day and 62 for nighttime (overnight). Gas bill for December for our 1,800-square foot house was $157.
Wow, sounds much warmer in your house than ours. Our programmable thermostat isn’t working properly, so for the past several weeks we’ve just been turning the damn thing off entirely. The majority of most days, the furnace isn’t even on. We have the heat on for maybe 2.5 hours when we get home at night, to warm the house from about 55, 57 degrees to 68.
It’s programmed to turn off in the middle of the night. When we wake up, the house is generally 57, 55 degrees again.(I don’t think they insulate like they do in the Midwest. Bastards.)
We tried to tough it out earlier this week when it got colder overnight, but the house was 52 degrees and we couldn’t take it. Had to turn on the heat for a couple of hours before shutting it off completely again.
and this was upstairs. It was colder downstairs.
On days we’re home all day, we may turn the heat on for an entire evening, then compensate by having the heat turned off the entire next day.
For our efforts: $147 bill ($12 of it was for 8 days of the old place) for a 1650 square foot house. We’re gonna try to get it near 100 next month, as we discovered the malfunctioning thermostat mid-month.
But it’s better than the $99 bill we got for 8 days last month. yowza. That’s when we started turning the furnace off for most of the day.
$99 for 8 days is outrageous. $147 for a month is about what we pay. Actually, I’m looking at our electric bill right now, and our bill for December was $157.12.
We don’t make any effort to keep our heat turned down, though. We turn it down to 65 or 67 at night, but during the day when we are home, we turn it up to 69 or 70. Sometimes 71 or 72, if Lynn is cold.
If you’re getting the equivalent of our electric bill, and you’re not warm…there is something wrong. Would you mind paying $147.00 if you were toasty?
Great question. No, I wouldn’t mind.
And to be fair, the 147 was our entire PG&E bill, which includes electricity (nominal this time of year). But the bulk of the bill was gas heat.
the 99, though, was gas only for 8 days(part of a much larger bill). I tried to explain to the PG&E woman that they were saying we used twice as many therms in 8 days as we did in 31 days at the old place. she’s all, you just need to turn your heat down.
Bah!
Did anyone ask about your insulation? Do you have insulation in your walls, in your attic? That would be one of the things I would check on first. Blown insulation is not too expensive from what I understand…
I believe the blown-in attic insulation was part of the inspection. And I believe the insulation is good enough. Probably could always use more, but I don’t think the attic insulation is the problem. It’s more likely the wall insulation or the windows. Among many things. Being two floors doesn’t help.
Like Matt, we keep our house toasty. Well, kind of. Parts of our house are really chilly regardless of what we set the heat at (70 generally).
Oh, and next time a previous owner never bothers to get us the utility bills to look at, I’ll be more suspicious. Just glad we’ve had an easy winter so far, though this past week has been colder. Even so, our bills are high. We’re on a $120/month budget with the gas company right now, but if I recall correctly, last month’s bill was closer to $160. And then there’s the electric bill which has been running $70+ lately, and the water/sewage/trash which is roughly $85.
I for one didn’t think that much about expenses beyond the mortgage when we bought this place, but I sure do think about it now.