Greg came back inside at 3:50 in the morning, keys still in his hand, and said the truck's thermometer read 4 degrees. That was the second of four nights in a row in the single digits. The furnace ran so steadily that week I stopped hearing it, the way you stop hearing a refrigerator.
The bill arrived on Tuesday. $286. That's the highest gas bill we have ever had in this house, and I have the green notebook to prove it, going back to 2003. The old record was $248, last January.
What the bill was made of
Our billing period ran December 12 to January 13, so it caught every one of those cold nights. We used 324 Ccf of gas. For comparison, the same period a year ago was 281 Ccf, and last month was 214.
Here's how the $286 broke down:
- Gas supply: 324 Ccf at our fixed $0.62 per Ccf, which comes to $200.88.
- Delivery, customer charge and riders from our utility: $85.12.
Back in September, I locked our gas supply at a 12-month fixed rate of $0.62 per Ccf. I wrote at the time that a fixed rate caps one piece of the bill, not the whole bill. This month I got to find out exactly what that means.
What the fixed rate protected
The utility's default supply price for that billing month, the one we'd have paid if I'd done nothing, was about $0.79 per Ccf. That's the price that moves every month with the market, and it went up right along with the cold.
At $0.79, our 324 Ccf would have cost $255.96 for supply instead of $200.88. So the fixed rate saved us about $55 this month. Over the three cold months, I expect it to add up to something like $120 to $150. I'll know in March.
What it didn't protect
It didn't protect us from using more gas. The fixed rate is a price per unit. When it's 4 degrees outside, the furnace burns more units, and there's no contract in the world that changes that. Our usage went up 15 percent over last January, and the bill went up with it.
It also didn't protect us from the delivery side, which stays with our utility no matter who supplies the gas. Part of that is a flat customer charge, and part of it goes up with every Ccf we use. So the colder it gets, the more delivery costs too.
I'll admit my first reaction was that the fixed rate hadn't worked. Then I did the arithmetic and calmed down. It did what it said. I just had to remember what it said.
What I changed
Some of this is easy and some of it is just us being sensible. None of it cost more than $40.
The thermostat. We used to keep it at 68 around the clock in winter. Now it's 68 from 3:30 a.m., when Greg gets up for his route, until 9 p.m., then 64 overnight. I wear a fleece and Biscuit sleeps on Greg's feet, so everyone's warm enough.
The filter. I changed it in December, but after a week of the furnace running nonstop, I checked again and it was already gray. I'm checking it every month now through March.
The door sweep. Our family room downstairs has a door to the garage, and I could feel cold air pouring in under it. Greg put on a new sweep for $14 from Lowe's. The family room is noticeably warmer.
Blinds and curtains. I close them at dusk now on the north side of the house. The windows were replaced in 2008, but there's still a chill near them on the coldest nights.
What I didn't do is close off the heat vents in the rooms upstairs we don't use. I asked the man who checked our furnace in the fall, and he said closing too many vents can make the system work harder, not easier. So the kids' old rooms stay open, just quiet.
I also looked at budget billing, where the utility spreads your yearly cost into equal monthly payments. It won't lower the total, but it would smooth out a month like this one. We decided we'd rather see the real number each month so we notice changes. That's a personal choice, and plenty of people are happier the other way.
February should be lower if the weather cooperates. I'm not counting on it.
