Cold for the First Time in Years

I have been spoiled for the past five years. Living in an apartment in Cockeysville, MD I hardly ever had to put my heat on. I was in a middle-floor garden apartment, so I had plenty of heat radiating from above, below and beside me. In fact, many days I had to crack some windows open because it got too hot. But it wasn't always like that. I my parent's house in Baltimore got pretty cold in winter, but nothing was as cold as my grandmother's house in Ireland in winter. The only room that was warm was the kitchen in which she had a turf-burning stove.

This year is completely different. We got an early taste of the winter that is to come in Caroline County for a few days in Mid-October this year. The temperature was only around 40 during the day and it was rainy and damp. This is our first year in this house, so everything is a learning experience. We could not figure out how to get the furnace to work, so we had to call the son-in-law of the late Betty Boyd (the lady who owned the house before) to show us how to start the furnace. Even with the furnace on, it gets cold in this house. So we close the doors to the rooms we don't use hoping that the heating fuel will last longer. You see, we do not have central heat. It is a mobile home furnace, so it is in a closet in the house between the bedrooms and the dining room. It blows hot air through vents in the closet, but there are no vents anywhere else.

The other heat source is a free-standing gas stove similar to a wood-burning or pellet stove in the living room. We have turned it on to see if it works, but we have found out that the blower is not working for some reason. It will get hot from the flames but it will not blow the air around the room. We have turned that one back off until it gets really cold so we don't waste fuel keeping the pilot on. Gina at Suburban Popane told me that each pilot light uses 30 gallons of gas a year.

The heat sources use Liquid Propane. When we closed on the house in August, I was quoted a price of $2.50 a gallon. I was concerned about having the money to get heating fuel for the winter. After a lot of prayer, the Lord answered by giving me almost 20 hours overtime last pay period. I thought I would have enough to get fuel to last for the winter. Not so. When I called to place an order, I was informed that the price had gone up to $2.75 a gallon, so even with a $300 LP budget, I wasn't going to get any more than 100 gallons. When I asked them to let me know what the prior usage was, they said 800 gallons in 2007 – that's the last year that Betty Boyd was alive. I couldn't believe it! How could anyone use that much gas in a year?

So, we have opted to be cold. We need to stretch our fuel as far as it will go, even if it means keeping the thermostats set at 65 degrees, wearing extra clothes in the house, cooking caseroles in the oven for another heat source, wrapping ourselves in blankets and sleeping bags if we watch TV, and extra blankets on the beds. Some heat is better than none. I guess we are fortunate for that, since there will be many people sleeping on the streets this winter with nothing to keep them warm.