Getting ready for winter

Reuters/NY Times:

It's summer in the United States, but many Americans are already fretting about winter.

Record prices for home heating oil are rippling across America's northern regions, stoking demand for wood stoves and other alternatives, and forcing some heating oil companies out of business.

In New England, which has the nation's highest rates of heating oil use, homeowners are bracing for a near doubling in the cost to fill home oil storage tanks compared with last year.

The surging cost has spread alarm among heating oil distributors, mainly small and often family-run businesses. Their profit margins already squeezed, they now face the prospect of taking on unprecedented amounts of debt to buy fuel for winter.

"It's cutting into us really deep now," said Ray Scarfo, president of Ranco Fuel, a 33-year-old family-run business in Medford, Massachusetts. "We don't even know if we'll even have a heating oil business when it comes to next winter."

Three heating oil companies have failed since March in Connecticut. Vermont is creating a task force to help residents deal with rising heating oil and gas prices, and from Maine to Minnesota authorities are warning residents to prepare for a surge in the cost of staying warm.

On July 9, the governors of Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island called on Washington to increase the region's home heating assistance to $1 billion from $252 million last winter.

"This is a human catastrophe coming at us in the state of Maine in terms of energy supply and costs," Angus King, the state's former governor, told a recent alternative energy industry gathering. Maine has the highest rate of heating oil use in the nation, with about 87 percent of homes using heating oil or kerosene.

King said he expects the cost to fill a typical family's heating oil storage tank in Maine could top $1,000 this winter, double last year's cost, following a recent spike in heating oil prices above $4 a gallon. Other estimates put the cost at about $800, up 60 percent from last year.

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The cost of propane seems to track the cost of gas, which makes running my propane furnace more expensive to operate than running the air conditioner in July. For a year or so I burned wood gathered from my property in a stove in the middle of the house and it worked pretty well, but also required a lot of effort in bringing in wood and hauling ashes. In the last couple of years I have been using small ceramic electric heat in the rooms I occupy. The cost has been minimal, roughly $15 a month more on my winter electric bill.

I realize it is much colder in Maine than it is in South Texas, but it is still worth considering to supplement the existing heat. It cost much less to run your furnace with the thermostat on 60 and then use the ceramic cube heaters to get comfortable in the room you are using.