In our home, we have found that we can save on heating oil by simply shutting off our furnace for days at a time. While this technique isn’t for everyone, it can help you get through the really tough times.
We usually take having automatic hot water for granted. But generations before us didn’t have any such luxury. While I’m not ready to live in the dark ages, I have discovered that there are times that living without hot water isn’t as hard as you might think.
The way I discovered this was by accident. The switch that turns off our furnace is located on a wall in the stairwell leading down to the basement. Unfortunately, the easy access means that it sometimes accidentally gets shut off. One day, I went to take my shower, only to be greeted with no hot water. Because the weather was warm, I found that a cool shower was tolerable. It then became a sort of game for me to see how long we could go without relying on the hot water all of the time. Here are some of the ways we coped.
I wash most of our clothing in cold water, so this wasn’t a problem to be without hot water for a few days.
For dishes, we could heat up enough hot water in the kettle to get the dishes clean. The same went for mopping the floor and other cleaning.
We scheduled a time to turn the furnace on for a few hours every few days. During that time, we could wash the towels and sheets in hot water, give all of the kids warm baths (and we could also heat water for baths on other days), and run a load in dishwasher instead of washing dishes by hand.
The results? Shutting of the furnace in this way for about two weeks shaved almost two thirds off the cost of our summer monthly oil usage. A big chunk of the cost to run our furnace is keeping the water at a hot temperature for demand. Pluus, when we did turn the furnace on, we tended to take shorter showers at a lower temperature. Checking with our local oil company confirmed that unless the switch was being turned on and off several times a day, this practice should have no negative effect on our furnace.
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, creating a home in the Home Blog, caring for little ones in the Baby Blog and now relationships in the Marriage Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here or subscribe to the blog using the subscription box on the right.
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