I am now entering my third year of home-ownership, and FINALLY I have some real insulation in my house!
In review: Since I purchased this house I have overwintered it twice, and in the process burned about 1,600 gallons of Liquefied Petroleum Gas, 1,500 pounds of Anthracite coal and 10,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity to keep it heated, at an estimated annual cost of over $1,0o0! Considering that my house is only 750 square feet this is utterly ludicrous in my opinion!
So far the addition of a new high-efficiency furnace and Harman Magnafire Mk.1 coal stove have helped immensely in my heating costs, but the fact of the matter is that up until about three weeks ago my house had literally no insulation!
My parents and I agreed that this was unacceptable, so about three weeks ago my father and I spent the morning blowing in shredded fiberglass bedding into my attic. I had expected to get about a foot of bedding in within reasonable costs, however owing to the small size of my house we got close to three! In technical terms we increased my attic insulation by an order of magnitude; in my opinion we went from R-6 to R-60.
Even now the insulation seems to be making a difference; on sunny days I haven't had to run the stove at all, regardless of the nighttime low. And on the colder days so far I have only had to run the stove at the bare minimum to keep the anthracite lit! At least so far my heating time from a single 50lb bag of coal has almost doubled...
All I am certain of is that winter is coming... Hopefully my insulation makes as big of a difference as I am hoping for; last year my furnace only kicked on when it was either rediculously cold (as in 13 below zero, when my stove was running near maximum output and the furnace STILL kicked on!) or when the stove went out... I am half expecting, half hoping that with a little care on my part that the furnace never kicks on this winter, and that I burn between half and two thirds of the coal that I did last year. And considering the improvement in insulation I don't think that this is unreasonable.
