Get Your Heating Bill Yet? Is It Making A Dent In Your Tackle Purchases

[fishweewee]

I don't know about you but I'm getting hammered with my heating oil bills.

It's not mid-January and I've already shelled out more bucks for the Oct-Jan bills than I have for the entire last heating season. And it's been a warm winter.

How are you faring? Do you guys purchase tackle or boat gear in the winter months? If so, are these high prices hurting you?

[Thom]

Put in an wood pellet insert it sure is helping. Oil and wood for the month of dec. 250.00 . ThomT

[Swimmer]

Turned down the hot water heater fired by oil to 120 degrees helped. Wood stove upstairs and with forced hot water oil heat. The colder it get the more open the stove damper gets. Still it sucks. Log length cord wood is now $85.oo per, which I usally get 7 cord at a whack. It has to affecting everynes purchases for next year.

[spence]

It hasn't been as bad as expected, but we also are militant about keeping the heat as low as possible.

Working from home there are times I can't feel my toes.

-spence

[iluvspots]

i'm burning bassmaster plugs to stay warm

[Flaptail]

Ben, as a Facilities Manager I spent most of this week choking on gas bills for our different buildings. Take for instance our High School/Junior High building complex. 326,400 square feet total. One heating plant for the two. New equipment, 2002, 2.8 million in new boilers, circ. pumps etc. Month of December, and remember we were not in session for ten days at X-Mas, $ 56,420.00

I have four other buildings on all gas as well. That's twice what last years bill was for that complex.

[lurch]

I understand the reason for the oil prices being high but why Natural gas??

Why is it that the price of NG doubles in the winter??

I have a small cape and usually pay 500-700/season and the one bill I received was almost 500$ (I usually fill 3-4 times per season)!

I am glad I have oil because when I was in the same size house I was playing almost 400$/ month (new furnace and well insulated as well).

[Karl F]

utilities


I heat with wood, and thank god, trees are all around me, and with the wind storm of 12/09, I have scored some nice oak and locust for next season.

Cape & Islands, 81 % electric increase, 70% increase in gas, and oil, well that's off the charts. And don't even get me started on my homeowners ins.!
It's official, according to WXTK, lowest prevailing wages, highest cost of living in the Northeast, is right here, Cape and Islands,. coupled with this, and the seasonal job issues, and the decline in the RE market, well the economic forecast is not pretty for us down here...

As far as purchases, well, I need some lure parts, will acquire them as needed, and thankfully, I have plenty of blanks

[Slipknot]

It is killing me what heating costs but all I can do about it is turn down the thermostat and wear a sweatshirt.

If oil company executives (who make insane profits) could be charged rediculous prices for their services that they personally need, maybe it would bring them back down to earth, but that's not gonna happen.
Another words if I ever go to an estimate for a job at an oil company CEO's home, I'd charge him twice the price just because, and I'd tell him if he doesn't like it blame the high fuel costs because it costs all of us when we get gaffed

thanks weewee, now you got me pissed, good thing it's in the 50's right now

[luds]

It's killin me. I'm moving this month as a result to an apartment with all utilities included.

[Slipknot]

Originally Posted by Karl F

utilities


I heat with wood, and thank god, trees are all around me, and with the wind storm of 12/09, I have scored some nice oak and locust for next season.

Cape & Islands, 81 % electric increase, 70% increase in gas, and oil, well that's off the charts. And don't even get me started on my homeowners ins.!
It's official, according to WXTK, lowest prevailing wages, highest cost of living in the Northeast, is right here, Cape and Islands,. coupled with this, and the seasonal job issues, and the decline in the RE market, well the economic forecast is not pretty for us down here...
:

and ya know why that is? because Americans are too damn cheap to spend money on vacation and all us yankees up here are to frugal to part with our money. I haven't done much work down the cape in a long time because they don't wanna pay, others will work cheap so they get the job. Out of staters with second homes are tightwads with their money and beat the prices down so I go west where the money is. It sucks that the Capes' cost rise more than elsewhere. The last 20 years have changed the Cape forever and that's sad.

[fishweewee]

Steve,

As I understand it, natural gas is closely correlated to crude oil prices.

I don't know why.

Now, as far as the evil oil companies - I mean it sucks but there is the law of supply and demand to deal with (constrained supply because we haven't built new refineries to process high sulfur crude, increased demand from China etc) and the fact that we have these !@#$ing speculators pushing oil futures up into the stratosphere.

Anyhoo, it's funny (or sad) that I'm thinking of my bills in terms of whole van staal reels.

One of my neighbors, who uses natural gas to heat her home, had a whopping $700 gas bill ... for the month of December.

[spence]

That's just evil

Has anyone installed programmable thermostats and noticed a big difference?

We have 4 zones and are pretty good about making sure they are turned as low as possible when not in use...but I've been a thinking...

-spence

[Moses]

Cost are definitely up this season. Programmable thermostats used to help but now that the wife is home full time with the kids, they need to keep the heat at a steady state. When I arrive home, I always drop it a few degrees and they're all getting used to wearing sweatshirts, at minimum, around the house.

[fishweewee]

freakin oil is creeping up to $70/bbl again.

[chris L]

Im independantly wealthy so it doesnt affect me at all . Ill smoke them oils at that price

[TheSpecialist]

I am in the same boat as Moses. There was a story in the paper about the NG demand not being so great cause of the mild temps. This is just price gouging plain and simple...

[Mike P]

Ben, I can't buy the supply and demand argument any more. I can't help but conclude it's pure price gouging and windfall profit-taking.

Why does the price of crude today result in an immediate spike at the pump, when the oil purchased on those futures might still be in the ground over in Saudi?

Prices went up $1.50 a gallon in the 3 days after Katrina, well before the extent of refinery damage was known and before any adverse affect could have occurred to gas supplies. Yet, in the next 6 weeks, when any shortages that occurred would have had their greatest effect, prices fell to below where they were right before Katrina Could it have had something to do with Katrina hitting the week before Labor Day, after people made their final vacation plans (seeing how prices had remained relatively stable since Memorial Day when they usually rise) and the oil barons saw the opportunity to take some quick windfall profits?

Home heating oil? Most of what's currently in the supply line was refined months ago. And it's been a mild winter. Yet, they cite the need to divert crude supplies to heating oil production as one rationale for the prices spiking after the first week of December.

Sorry--I'm not some wild-eyed lefty, but I ain't buying Big Oil's bullscheit any more

[fishweewee]

Mike,

Prices are heavily influenced by the futures market. Hell, I'm not happy, but if you look at how prices fluctuate around the times gov't inventory reports are released, you'll see some correlation.

Anyways, what's propping oil up right now, after a time of relative calmness, is geopolitical uncertainty.

Iran is stirring the pot and people are worried about supply constraints.

I don't doubt that there may have been some gouging at the retail level at the time of Katrina, but equilibrium supply and demand are dictating the prices right now.

I had a fascinating discussion about oil with an energy trader.

There is more than enough crude to go around.

It's just not the light sweet variety (i.e., low sulfur) that our refineries are accustomed to refining into gas. We need to revamp our refinery capacity. Something tells me that there is an economic incentive to do that right now, but new capacity doesn't exactly turn on a dime.

Anyways, getting back to fishing - if prices trend as they are now, I think I'm gonna be fishing local a lot more this season.

[fishweewee]

One more thing - #2 home heating oil is really nothing more than low sulfur diesel with a red die to mark it as a tax-exempt fuel.

So if they're diverting heating oil for other distillate than that makes sense.

The other thing that most people don't realize - is that when warm weather hits, the wholesale cost of heating oil usually goes down, but the RETAIL PRICE HAS TO GO UP. Heating oil companies have to raise prices to meet the per-gallon profit targets, because they're shipping fewer gallons when it's warm.

You know Mike, I'm kinda wondering if I should move to S. Virginia or N. Carolina where the fishing might be a bit less rocky but the weather a lot warmer. I'm getting tired of this tri-state madness.

[Joe]

My wife's grandmother passed away in October of 04, she lived in NC.
She was a very cheap person - she moved down there to save money - she lived in a trailer, in New Bern.
I went down there to clean out the trailer and get it ready to sell. We sold her trailer for 7K - which is about the going rate for a used double wide. It cost another 150 per month to park it on the lot. It was about 1/2 hour from the open ocean and maybe 10 mins to Palmico Sound.

[UserRemoved1]

I pre-bought all my oil this year at 2.19 a gallon so the heat hasn't been concerning me as much this year as last. We locked in last year too but the bills in the winter stink so I prepaid it in the fall and got a good price.

WEEWEE Get programmable thermostats and use them on every zone. Get the ones with the highest number of program cycles along with 7 day. Use it aggressively and you will see significant savings. We saved over a tank of oil last year alone and that was before we did the last zone upstairs. The nice thing is you can set it to go to all different levels in multiple times during the day and then drop to 60 at nite if the zone isn't needed or during the day if it's not needed then.

[BigFish]

No problem (right now) here in BigFish city! We bought the house with a half tank of oil....I got another half tank of oil free from a removal I did and filled the tank at the house....it is down to a little less than half right now and I am doing another removal on Tuesday that has another half tank of oil and its coming home with me....I also have a full tank of oil I got free from some other removals ready to use when I need it! Looks like I won't need to buy any oil this winter at all!

Think of all the tackle I can buy with the savings!

[JoeyM]

hasn't effected me...here are the recent winter purchases so far:


oh wait, i live in a tiny apartment and heat is free...oh yeah, my priorities are messed up!

BUT, here's a sail we caught in the keys last week:

[BigFish]

Nice!

[Pete_G]

Home builders and the real estate market are all talking about the mid-west migration. Living expenses are MUCH cheaper out there. People are leaving New England at a pretty good pace these days.

My gas fireplace has been good to me. Localized heat where I spend most of my time, in the living room. I don't really care if some of my other rooms are a bit chilly.

[nightfighter]

We're on our third delivery (today) since August. 235 gallons at @$2.05/gallon is 482 bucks

[basswipe]

Here's something scary...the house I'm working at uses 150gals. oil every two weeks!

Yes you read that correctly!

Jeez.....what it must be like to have such a large house and an equal amount of money.

[chris L]

sure joey show us how nice it is where are . Im going to charter a jet , Ill be there Sunday

[Thom]

NOt a house but the college that I work at we getting are oil del three times a week at 8000 gals at a time. Now we arn't using #2 we are using #6 still it costs the college about 1.15 per gallon yesterday the averaged 2.75 gpm. Last year at this time we were getting 6 loads a week week an average or about 5.5 gpm. THomT