Fuel prices are only a small part of the problem in comparison to poorly insulated, poorly weatherized homes with old windows and poorly designed, poorly maintained, grossly oversized, inefficient heating systems.

The low income households are suffering due to the cost of heating oil, kerosene, propane and the way it’s sold. Some people don’t take advantage of pre-buy and price-cap programs due to cost, minimum purchases and auto-fill requirements. Some customers have larger tanks or twin tanks, but they can’t afford to fill them when prices are lower. Many low income households can’t afford 100 to 150 gallon minimum deliveries, emergency deliveries or short charges so they’ll often buy kerosene at the pump 5 or 10 gallons at a time. Because of this, we’ve seen a large increase in run-outs, freeze-ups and emergency service calls. Since people are keeping their tanks low, some are having issues due to condensation in outside steel tanks.

The heating assistance and weatherization assistance programs also haven’t kept pace with fuel, professional labor, materials, service and installation cost inflation.

We collect our wood from the dead trees in our mini forest. We also collect any free wood the neighbours offer. Our kerosene bill is 120 dollars a month If we get it every single week. By comparison our food bill drops to about 20 dollars a week or 80 dollars a month for a family of seven.

We try to keep from buying any kerosene until the temperatures reach freezing out side…or just above. This year we didn’t buy any kerosene until December. We have had some off and on through to the present. On cold nights when we don’t have kerosene we layer the blankets thickly. I found that four or more blankets will keep an adult warm. My children all sleep in the same bed to keep warm. All of them sleep under 4 or more covers as well. The baby sleeps in my bed with me to keep warm.

We moved to rural Arkansas in part due to the high cost of heating in Connecticut. Also in part due to the extremely high taxes in Connecticut. Arkansas has very low taxes in comparison. I know that we do not have enough wood on our property, if we cut down the whole mini forest, to heat our house for the next 5 years. I am actively planting trees each year, but this only adds minimal additional fuel. I plan to manage the forest in a sustainable way.

I would like to add solar electricity so that I could afford to have more electric space heaters or geo thermal heat supplied by a solar electric pump. I was surprised to see you didn’t suggest geo thermal heating measures for the south as well as better insulation. Geo-thermal heating is quite simple and could be installed by most home owners and some heavy machinery.

I am just too poor for even that.

1. Why waste heating fuel to cook food when there is the solar oven concept. A small one can be constructed from cardboard [or even an upside down umbrella] and tinfoil. The construction plans, usage guidelines, and recipes are on the internet for free.

2. Underground basements stay cool in summer. No need to burn electricity /fuel on AC if you’ve got one. Just move everyone downstairs.

3. Regarding heating, you are so right: Insulation Insulation Insulation.

4. What’s “coppicing”?

Birch coppices well where we are in the UK, even older stools.

If Peak Oil hits soon I can see people house sharing to save fuel, especially in houses with a chimney. Present space standards aren’t sustainable long term. In the US you can burn the empty houses to keep warm. Won’t work in the UK as most of our houses are masonary construction with only the first floor and roof in timber.

Geothermal: Ground-coupled heat pumps, while a big initial investment are most efficient way to pull heat from below earth’s frostline in winter and push heat into the earth in A/C season. Not to be confused with geothermal “fired” steam cycle power plants–a rare thing, of big scale and big investment viable where there are geysers.

US Monopoly utilities still fight efficiency programs as they are usually investor owned, or, like TVA, only concerned about growing their empire. Studies show if users simply could see real-time what their power draw is, they cut about 20% of use. Time of use rates would wipe out the need for wasteful (gas fired) peaking plants. US SE region –the power exporter, has hit the limit of power plant building due to lack of water for plants–that’s the crisis Atlanta is battling–keeping the 5 power plants (including Nuclear Plant Farley) downstream cooled not just lawns watered. Food production isn’t talked about, though Bush now proposes cutting funding to 11 USDA research centers–Georgia’s is the soil erosion study center going back to the 30’s…all a very grim picture.

What’s more, the people doing the retrofitting are long-term unemployed people who’ve been retrained. They’ve done over 3000 homes so far.

Coppicing is mentioned as having an economic value in the U.S. but very little research has been done on it so far as I can tell. The U.K. is seeing a resurgence in coppiced wood products and boatloads of information is available from across the pond. Which is helpful, but only to a point (whenever I see photos of Brits out coppicing in January and there’s no snow on the ground but mud and dead leaves, I have to laugh).

I’ve been reading up on the subject as fast as I can because a friend owns 80 acres of wooded land about 60 miles from here. It’s mostly birch with spruce and cottonwood and some willow and aspen. Except for the spruce everything else supposedly does well with coppicing. Unfortunately, the birch trees are mature so it’s unlikely they’ll send up shoots from the stump. They might, however, send up root shoots which could work out okay. The problem is testing the theory. If we cleared an acre of mature birch and nothing came up, oops. Cottonwood, on the other hand, is a “first responder” when the canopy is removed and it grows fast. There aren’t very many cottonwoods on the property (they get shut out as soon as the birch move in) so it’s hard to say if they’d colonize an open area quickly. But they might. We’re going to spend some time wandering around particularly to check out an area of younger birch trees. The property was homesteaded 40 years ago but was abandoned. The old garden patch has a whole bunch of young birch growing in it and it’s a pretty good sized area but I haven’t seen it in several years. But we’ll likely go check it out soon.

She’s very interested in field testing coppicing. I’m going to see if the Forestry Service folks or the local extension office can provide any guidance. It might be we just do the best we can and figure it out as we go.

Kerri

Our old house used oil, but I know natural gas is used in some houses in Massachusetts, just not a majority. Generally speaking, people around here don’t switch to a different heating system until the current one needs to be replaced.

The farm has a wood furnace with oil backup (which is rarely, if ever, used). And fortunately for a lot of folks around here, most have dual systems, given the increase in oil prices. A neighbor of my brother-in-law Warren came to him to see about getting a little bit of wood, and he stocked her up with enough until he could get in touch with my father-in-law William about getting a full load. He’s local and doesn’t charge as much as he could, just enough to have some take-home money after expenses.

The problem she was having is that the local oil company will only deliver if the order is for at least 150 gallons — that’s $495 as a lump sum, and no way did she have that much in the bank. It’s been a cold winter this year, so the folks with limited income are already suffering.

I’m really glad I moved up here this year, not just because we’re away from oil, but because I’m learning more about my in-laws and the community up here, and how they help each other out. We’re truly blessed, and I hope to share our fortune with other folks in the coming years.