This post is an ad-hoc posting in response to Gather Little By Little and his contemplation of home heating. To sum up, he has moved to a new house that is heated by mainly electricity with a propane fired fireplace. His utility bill came out to be what I consider a very shocking amount and wonders what he can do to alleviate his high cost of heating.

I provided a response in the comments of his blog, but the comments did not allow for formatting on my part and more bonkingly, I took electricity as his most expensive option when in fact it is the middle of the road option.

So here goes again, I am hoping he reads this.
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One of the things I hate about goals is the self-examination that comes with failure to meet them, but that is what goals are for and in this post I review how we did in 2008 with respect to the goals I set in this post 2008 Goals!.
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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A review of my goals from last year on its way and another post on this year’s goals!

I have noticed something in about the last year or so. The rate at which we see going out of business sales seems to be higher. I guess some of you will say it is obvious, but is it? I think some of it has to do with the fact Lorie and I are looking for such buying opportunities.

Off of the top of my head in the last year our area has seen four home furnishing, one home-item store, and one clothing store. I can’t say much for the furnishing stores except they were horribly over-priced to be begin with only in their last days were their prices reasonable and we purchased a piece from one of them.

I would advise people not to snap at going out of business sales purchases unless you know what the item is worth and then you can do so intelligently. Another strategy that you may elect to employ is waiting, but of course the risk is others will buy up the remaining stock.

Today, my brother came down and we unloaded a trailer load of wood about what I consider to be one-½ cord of it and I started up our fireplace again.

I have a computerized temperature taking system in my “office” and it shows what I believe to be indicative of what we can achieve with our wood fireplace.

Both images I generated from temperatures taken in the same location in our house and external weather conditions are pretty much the same.

My conclusions are that one can economically and effectively use their furnace as a base heating system and a wood fireplace for creating peak heat conditions.
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Many of us believe automotive repair to be too difficult to take on ourselves, and truth is some repairs are very much for the professional. While I have participated in some extensive repairs (changing a head gasket) some repairs require specialized tools not worth purchasing and knowledge to pull off.

However, some repairs are well within the realm of the non-professional. Changing the oil is one such repair, but I outsource that due to the hassle of oil disposal.

Brake repairs are one item most people should be able to do on their own, in fact in the last couple of months I have done two separate break repair jobs.
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One of my favorite winter foods is beef stew. Not the kind you buy in a can at your local grocery store, but real homemade beef stew. Not only is it tasty and nutritious, but it is also made with inexpensive ingredients. Carrots, potatoes, celery, onions, garlic, and a hunk of inexpensive beef.

In addition, it does not take a huge investment in time to make, though the recipe I present is for slow cooking the preparation time on your part is minimal. Often times I prepare it the night before and then plug in the slow cooker in the morning.
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Okay, so now you have a fireplace and of course it is cold out and you want to warm the house.

Now you need to get wood. Now, there are some things you need to know about wood before you go out and buy it. There is only one kind of wood to burn and that is properly seasoned wood!
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In my previous post I discussed about saving money on heating bills using wood heat. Is wood heat more inexpensive than natural gas, electric, oil, or propane? One would tend to answer yes, but not so fast, hunches are fine but in order to definitively answer that question you need to run some numbers.

What you can not measure or calculate you have to rely on hunches and while hunches are a good first cut at answering a proposition they can often be wrong.

I keep coming back to the E85 situation, it is cheaper to fill your vehicle with E85, your money is staying local and going to local corn growers & ethanol plants so that may bias you into concluding E85 is more inexpensive, but when you calculate the cents it costs you to drive a mile on E85 vs. E0 or E10 my experience shows the hunch wrong — E85 is more expensive!

Onto calculating heating value.
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It depends on a number of factors; however, the most important two are the cost of your main heating and the cost at which you can buy firewood. Don’t assume having wood fires is automatically more inexpensive. It is like the discovery I made that E85 is more expensive than E0 or E10 gasoline.
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