Drew Thomas
We're talking heating with this, and the utilities. How do you heat your house?
Jeff Matevish
Let's start that with, it is still winter, and it is still frigid here.
Drew Thomas
It really is.
Jeff Matevish
And my heat is cranked up.
Drew and Jeff
Yeah, it would be really nice for the furnace to not be running for just, like a couple hours a day at this point that would be great. Yeah. And we're not even close to being done with winter I mean, we're gonna get a little bit of a break, we got false spring, you know it's going to, yeah, this is, this is Western Pennsylvania we have, this is, what is this? This is first spring. And then there's second spring, and then there's false spring, and then there's spring Yeah. Which immediately turns into hot sweltering summer and then immediately back into, and we get excited every year. We do for this first thaw. Yep. That is absolutely true. So, yeah, so now that it is winter, what does your furnace run on?
Jeff Matevish
So, I do have a boiler, so I'm gas as my, my energy source. And I got radiant heat, radiator floorboards. Okay.
Drew and Jeff
It's actually in the floor. Well, no. baseboard. Oh ok, do you have to bleed them? Probably.
Jeff Matevish
They do. They do make some noise. So, I'm gonna assume that yeah, I do have to do that.
Drew and Jeff
I remember my grandparents having to bleed the radiators. That was a thing. Yeah. There's like a process you have to do like the farthest away from the boiler first or something like that. Yeah, I got a YouTube it. Yeah, I'm not sure. So, is it natural gas? Natural gas. Yeah. Okay. But it's, but it heats a boiler then water heats. Yeah, mine's, I'm, natural gas too but I have forced air. Okay. I wish I had that. So, you know, it's positive and negative. I mean, I'm lucky enough, when I bought the house, it has a whole house humidifier unit on it, which helps a lot. But a lot of times with forced air, you're dealing with a lot of like static electricity and dry air in the winter and nosebleed right? Oh, yeah. Dry eyes, sore throat, try to pet the cat, you get shocked. But, so obviously, we're not going to talk about like, you know, how to maintain your furnace. But we want to talk about the cost involved in this and how to potentially, you know, limit your costs when it comes to heating and so forth, and so forth. Like so, I think one of the first ways is to talk about, what do you keep your house temperature at? And do you have to fight with the wife to do that?
Drew and Jeff
We are both on the same team with that. No, we, we both like it pretty warm, so. Okay. I'm a shorts in the wintertime in my house guy. So 70, my house does not go under 73.
Drew and Jeff
Okay, see, we keep ours usually at 72. So, we're not that far away. No, no. Now they recommend, and I don't know who they is because they recommend a lot of things, but I've read that they recommend you keep your house at like 68. I can't keep it that cold.
Jeff Matevish
In the summer, yeah, I'd love that. Yeah, but not in the winter. Yeah. Well, so we're looking at some of the articles from our website, actually. Yeah. And one of these articles I saw said that even raising, or I guess, lowering for the winter, lowering your temperature in your house by one degree can save you up to 3% of your cost for heating your house. Really? Yeah. I thought that was pretty high. That seems a lot. Yeah. So, maybe, maybe next month, I'll drop my house down to 72 and see if I save 3%.
Drew and Jeff
No yeah, see, I don't know like well, okay, so lowering temperature. like, I have a smart thermostat. Okay. Because I'm a geek and I have all kinds of technology in my house. Yeah, but the, so the smart thermostat, so my, my smart thermostat actually detects whether my phone and my wife's phone, if they're in, if we're if we're in the house. It keeps the temperature whatever we set it. If both of our phones leave the thermostat is smart enough to know that we're not home and it lowers the temperature. Oh, now so...
Jeff Matevish
That's cool, and a little bit creepy, but yeah.
Drew and Jeff
Hey, you have an Alexa enabled house too.
Jeff Matevish
I know, but my Alexa doesn't know where I'm at.
Drew Thomas
Doesn't it?
Jeff Matevish
I want to think it doesn't. Okay. All right. All right.
Drew and Jeff
Now, at the same time, you could argue that every time we come home it's got to run for an hour and a half to bring it back up to temp. Yeah. But chances are it wouldn't have run that long for the eight hours we were at work to make up. I think it does make a difference.
Jeff Matevish
But that would be a little bit hard on your furnace too though if, I guess, and I don't know, I don't know. I was always told don't do drastic changes to your temperature at least for gas forced air, you'll burn that blower out or...
Drew and Jeff
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, it bottoms out like I can tell it where I want it to go. So, just because we leave like it just doesn't keep it at 72 but it bottoms out at like 65. Okay. So, if it gets to 64 It'll still turn on and get the house back up to 65.
Jeff Matevish
Yeah, and the chances of it going that low because I'm sure, Mr. Geek you have a very energy efficient house. I'm sure you have at least double pane windows and stuff like that. Oh, yeah, yeah. Good insulation.
Drew and Jeff
Yeah, there was double pane windows when we moved in. And the attic has a lot of blown in insulation, which is nice. Because that blown in stuff, I guess the thicker it is, and the fluffier, you keep it and the more effective it is. You look in my attic, and there's this tiny little space probably, I don't know, like an eight foot by 10-foot space that I can put stuff on to. The rest of the attic is just snow. I have not actually, I've been in the house almost three years, I don't think I've ever actually been to the other side of my attic because I don't know what's under the snow. And I don't want to be Clark Griswold and go straight through my ceiling and into my downstairs. Smart man. Yeah, that's what it looks like. It's like snow. But that does help.
Jeff Matevish
So, it probably doesn't take too much for your house to heat back up or probably doesn't lose too much heat throughout the day, even in the coldest days of the winter.
Drew and Jeff
No, it doesn't. I mean, it's like a pulse furnace. So, it turns on, it gets up to temp, and then it drops down. But it's not like the old days where, like my sister's house, she has a furnace that's like from way back. And it, it'll turn on and it'll take her house up to like 78. And then it'll drop and then like it won't turn on for like three hours, but it'll drop to 68. And then it'll turn on again and run it all the way up. So, you have like this, like 10-degree temperature swing in the house, like mine won't do that. Yeah, mine either. I think mine's maybe about two degrees. And then after two degrees turns back on. So, so I mean, different types of heating, you obviously have different costs. We're both natural gas, but there's obviously electric heat. That's an option.
Jeff Matevish
Which I heard that that's pretty expensive compared to other forms.
Drew Thomas
I guess it depends. I mean, gas right now isn't that bad? At least yet at least here. Yeah. Trying to figure out how they, how they charge you for gas, it's like you need a cryptogram and like an Indiana Jones medallion to understand how that is calculated on your bill.
Jeff Matevish
I just trust they're not ripping me off. Yeah. They're not out to make a ton of money. They're giving us a utility or they're providing us a utility.
Drew and Jeff
Yeah, yeah, but they're still for profit. They are for profit.
Jeff Matevish
But one of these articles even says that the utility companies are not out to make a massive profit.
Drew Thomas
I mean, that's true.
Jeff Matevish
Like you said, we had a short little conversation before this, that, you know, some companies will actually give you some money back if you buy energy efficient appliances, or our electric company, they'll send us LED light bulbs, because they want us to use more energy efficient light bulbs.
Drew Thomas
That's true. That's true. And honestly, when you say that, you're right, when I moved into the house, they gave me a rebate by buying my, my smart thermostat. I got the smart thermostat for like; I think I only ended up paying like $60 for it even though it was a $200 thermostat because I got it on sale. And then I got a rebate from my electric company because it's in their best interest to not have to supply me with as much gas or electric or whatever. So, electric heat, yeah, I mean, I've always, I had electric heat back in the day, before we bought the house and I lived in an apartment, I have electric heat. And there was always that smell whenever you first turned it on in the fall, and you burned all the dust off of it, because it was just basically a giant radiator. I mean, I guess or whatever. Big toaster, yeah. And that was not cheap. I mean, my electric was, was pretty high, you know. I remember one year my electric bill in December was something like $400. It was, it was crazy. Yeah, I've never had a gas bill that high but like I said, right now gas is a little cheaper. One thing you can do, is a lot of utility companies, they'll let you, it depends on the state that you're in, I guess I don't know if every state allows you to do this. But we're in Pennsylvania, and in Pennsylvania, you can buy your electric or your gas from your chosen supplier. So, you know, even though like it's, say it's First Energy as my electric company, I don't have to buy my electric from First Energy, I can buy it from another company in Ohio, or Virginia, or wherever. I still pay my local electric company for the bill, but my cost per kilowatt hour goes up or down based on where I'm getting my energy from. But you got to be careful with those. Because sometimes, they'll say they'll give you some deal, and they'll say okay, for the next three months, your kilowatt, your cost per kilowatt hour is like, I don't know a penny, right? But you don't, you read the fine print, and it says after six months, it can go up to some ridiculously high thing. So, if you're going to do a search for an energy supplier, make sure that you're locked into a contract that won't raise your rate unexpectedly. You know, they have to tell you like if it's a twelve-month contract, a six-month contract, whether it's variable, whether it's, whether it's a fixed rate. So, make sure you're careful about how you do that. Because you can, you can kind of get snowed early and think, oh, I'm gonna really save a bunch of money and you do for three months.
Jeff Matevish
And then, so make that change in winter, at the beginning of winter. So, you get that good deal at the beginning of winter, and not in the summer when you don't need it.
Drew Thomas
Yeah, but here's, here's the trick. If, if you're in a twelve-month contract, and you only get that deal for the first three, then you could end up paying more for the next nine months. So, you just gotta be very careful. You know, when you're doing those, doing your research, make sure that you're doing, I recommend like when I do it, I don't know if I should say I recommend but when I do this for myself, I only use like twelve-month contracts and fixed rates. Okay. And if that fixed rate is lower than what my current electric supplier is, or my current gas supplier is, then I figure, hey, at least for the next twelve months, I'm most likely getting a better deal. Okay, but I know that it can't move, you know. So, if it goes down, I don't get the benefit of that either. But it can't go up.
Jeff Matevish
So, along those lines, we're talking about contracts and things like that, some, some utility companies let you make payments on it like a payment plan. Is that something you do? I mean, I know I've had relatives do that. They'll take your highest amount used for a month. Oh, yeah. They'll break it out. Instead of paying $25 or $30 in June, you may pay $120 in June, and $120 every month instead of $200 in December. Yeah.
Drew Thomas
Yeah, I did. I did that when I was at the apartment after my $400 winter bill. Yeah. They call it like an equal payment plan. Yeah. So, you're right, you're paying possibly more than what you're using in the summer months, say, you know, when we're talking heating, right, you're, you're probably paying more in the summer months than you normally would. But it helps to offset the spikes in the winter. So, you're sort of paying ahead. Yeah, if you want to look at it that way. Yeah. And sort of building yourself a little nest egg in your account. And then when the electric goes up in the winter, you're not having to pay those giant spike bills. So, that's a good point. Yeah, you could definitely...
Jeff Matevish
You're not really saving on money. But you're, you're kind of making a little bit easier to budget.
Drew Thomas
Yeah. Oh, it definitely makes it easier to budget. Yeah. Because you know exactly what it's going to be. And a lot of times, too, they'll revisit you like every quarter. So, if you, if they look at your, if they look at what your equal payment plan is, and they'll say, oh, you're paying too much, you know, then maybe in the second quarter, it'll go down a little, because they kind of have an idea of how much you're going to need. But yeah, that's I mean, that's not a bad idea. Yeah. Especially if you're on a budget, because then you, then you don't have to try to worry about what it's gonna look like whenever it goes way up. Yeah. Yeah. You know, $25 electric bill in June is great. A $450 electric bill in January is not.
Jeff Matevish
Yeah, yeah. But if you run air conditioning, you're never gonna see that $25 bill in June anyway.
Drew Thomas
That's true. That is, that is true. So, yeah, I don't know which one of those, those types would be cheaper. I don't know if it would be electric or gas. I don't know what else is out there. Propane, oil, heating oil, you know, and not everybody has the ability to choose either, you know, if your house is in an area where they don't have natural gas lines, it's gonna be hard to use natural gas. If your, if your house isn't piped for natural gas, plumped for natural gas. So, you know, my parents actually have three different heating sources in their house. When they bought the house, it was electric. They have a wood burner downstairs and a fireplace in the living room that they can use. And then years ago, when I was a kid, they put in propane. So, primarily, they use the propane, right, but from a resale value on the house, technically, they can sell it as a three-heat source home. So, you can kind of pick how you want to, how you want to heat it. You know, if you're okay with chopping wood and you want to use the wood burner, you can go ahead and do that. You know, but not everybody wants to chop wood all the time. Yeah, you know.
Jeff Matevish
So, so propane, they have to get that filled what twice a year or?
Drew Thomas
Um, yeah, I guess probably they, it's not something that's, it's not like natural gas, where it's like they run lines on the ground like the truck comes up and right, right, you know, fills up the propane tanks. And they have the, they have these giant tanks out back that look like the Jolly Green Giant's version of what's under your grill. They used to have two, now they have three. So, that usually, it's usually like once a year they get them filled. Okay, you know, but I again, your mileage may vary depending on how hot you keep your house Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so we, so we kind of talked about, like some of the other stuff like the insulation, the windows, things like that, and keep that in mind. You said about, I think you said before we started about turning down your hot water tank.
Jeff Matevish
Yeah, for natural gas. That's a good way of saving a little bit of money.
Drew Thomas
So, if you don't mind a slightly cooler shower, you know, just, you mean turned down like the temperature on it. Right. Right. Okay. Yeah. Right.
Jeff Matevish
So, you're saving on heating that hot water to, to a hotter temperature. Yeah, yeah. And in the wintertime, I don't need a super hot shower, you know, anything above room temperature.
Drew Thomas
Yeah, that's a good point. And in the summertime, honestly, you don't always want really hot showers either, because...
Jeff Matevish
You're not heating your house in the summertime. So, that cost is you know, lower anyway.
Drew Thomas
That's true. You mentioned about the budgeting, and I think the, the budget plan and stuff, I mean, whether you go on a budget plan from your utility provider, or whether you do it yourself, I think just having a budget is the big thing to try to remember. Like, you know, budget out for it understand that if you live in an area where there's cold winters or hot summers, you're gonna have peaks and valleys in your heating costs or your cooling costs. So, budget for that. I mean, if you know that's going to happen, you know, make sure you have a budget somehow. Yeah, you know, budgeted somehow.
Jeff Matevish
You mentioned, or we talked a little bit about your smart thermostat. I don't personally have a smart thermostat. But I have a hack for that. So, not necessarily that it's going to be controlled, but to kind of keep track of your, your temperature a little bit more. So, using old mercury thermostats, they're not very accurate, you know, you can be within a couple of degrees and not know it. So, buy yourself a little digital thermometer, and put that next to your thermostat or fairly, you know, in the same room as your thermostat. I keep my house at 73. But, you know, on my thermostat, it looks like 75. I gotcha. And that's kind of how I keep track of my temperature and dial it in a little bit more, literally.
Drew Thomas
That's probably a good point, because sometimes people make adjustments to their house after they're built. Like most, I would have to say that most of the time when a house is built, your thermostat is usually wired in somewhere, that's first of all convenient. But then second of all, it's supposed to be in some sort of a centralized location that is away from drafts and things like that, so that it maintains an accurate temperature. But then people make modifications to their house, they put a door in where they didn't used to be a door. So, they can go out on the deck, knock a wall, they knock a wall down, they put a wall up, whatever it is. So, you know, keep that in mind, too. If you're doing home renovations, or if you think your house has been renovated prior to you moving in, and your thermostat isn't where it's most efficient. It's, it's not a cheap prospect to move your thermostat. But you know, it's just something to keep in mind. I think you make a good point. Like, keep a thermometer somewhere else in the house where you can base your setting on your thermostat on the actual temperature of the house, not necessarily what the thermostat says it is because it may or may not be accurate. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's a good point. If you do have multiple options, you know, for heating, like my parents do, which, like I said, not every house does, but, you know, keep an eye on the electric company, you know, maybe the electric is cheaper next year. Probably not. But it could be, you know, I mean, yeah. For all of you people that work for electric companies don't send us hate mail. But yeah, yeah.
Jeff Matevish
And you know, if you can close a room off, close the door cover a vent, you know, if you don't need to heat that room, don't heat that room, if you're not going to be in there. That's a really good point, I think, or if you have the option for zoning. Some, some houses and some thermostats, some, some furnaces, you can, you can actually have zones in your house, you know.
Drew Thomas
Yeah, actually use that. Bigger houses a lot of times to have zones, you know, but use that functionality. Yeah, you said about smart thermostats, some smart thermostats, not all but some smart thermostats actually have remote sensors, you can put in different parts of the house. And it'll read back to the thermostat that, hey, this room in the house is cooler than that room. And if your house is like mine with forced air, the ductwork can be opened and closed with little valves, little levers on the ductwork. And the goal should be really to heat your house evenly, so that you don't have hot and cold spots. But the only way to really do that is to put a temperature sensor in multiple places so that you know whether or not your house is being heated evenly or not. So, that's something you could also look into if you're not zoned, you know, your house either wasn't big enough to be zoned, or if it just, just wasn't because it's an older home or something like that. There are technological alternatives to possibly be able to do sort of a, not really a zoning, but at least be able to help even out your heat. Yeah, no, that's, that's a good point. You know? And if he and if you can make your downstairs warmer heat rises, heat rises. I mean, it really does. You have a wood burner you have a fireplace on a lower level, and it's not... It also depends on... Let's talk about fireplaces for a second here too. Fireplaces, you want to look at too, is it wood burning fireplace? Is it a gas fireplace? And then if it's a gas fireplace, is it an insert where most of the heat comes into the room? Or is it more like a wood burning fireplace or gas logs where most of the heat goes right up your chimney? So, you want to consider that too. You know that just because your house has a fireplace doesn't necessarily mean that all of the heat is going into the house. A lot of it can go right up the chimney if you're not careful. So, you got to...
Jeff Matevish
I have a gas or a not gas. I have a wood burning fireplace, but I also have a wood burning stove in my basement for that same reason. You heat the basement up heat that floor up yeah, you know and hopefully save a little bit on heating the rest of the house with, with that natural gas.
Drew Thomas
What kind do you have like, is there space under your wood burning stove? Or is it like one of those...
Jeff Matevish
I have space underneath it. It's, it's, it's not strictly wood. It's I think it's actually a coal burner. Okay, but we burn wood there too.
Drew Thomas
I only ask because my parents they have a wood burner. Their wood burner downstairs has a space under it. And we had a cat, whenever I was younger, that used to literally love to sleep under it and it's only like eight inches off the ground. You know, and like we had a cat that would sleep under there. I thought she was going to just combust one day, but she loved it. She absolutely loved being under there and those things get hot. Oh yeah. Oh, you know, but no, she...
Jeff Matevish
We haven't had that; we would have that happen yet. Yeah, yeah, work. Yeah, but be careful. Yeah. Yeah. Well, she just started going downstairs, so. We just started letting her down, oh probably actually just a week or two ago, so. Oh, really? Keep an eye on it. Yeah. Yeah.
Drew Thomas
what else, what else we got?
Jeff Matevish
If you haven't had your furnace checked by someone who is a trained professional within the last couple of years, probably not a bad idea to make sure it's still efficient and working properly, that it is not dangerous. That could save you some money.
Drew Thomas
That's a good point. Yeah, absolutely. Good point. So, same thing with chimneys and things like that if you haven't had them cleaned, creosote, things like that build up, you know, from it. I mean, it's not necessarily a cost saving thing. I mean, we're talking cost savings because, you know, Bank Chats and all that. But, I mean, from a safety perspective, you know, you don't want to be fired. It's cost-saving if you don't have to rebuild a house. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't you say you just had your chimneys clean? Like last year? Yeah. I
Jeff Matevish
had looked at it. Yeah. Oh, it wasn't okay. Yeah. Okay. It wasn't, wasn't too bad. But yeah, but yeah, I burned I burned those, creosote logs. I don't know if it actually helps. I've heard they help. Anti-creosote. Yeah. Whatever you want to call them.
Drew Thomas
That's true. If they're creosote logs...
Jeff Matevish
Yeah, that's exactly the opposite of what I want. Yeah, yeah. All right. Yeah. I don't know if that actually works. But it's a peace of mind. Yeah.
Drew Thomas
I would have to, I mean, that's not hurting anything. Yeah. See, from a bank perspective, we're not allowed to say anything that isn't true. But, but other marketing can be a little bit more free with that stuff. But I'd have to think they probably work, I would assume. I hope they do. Yeah. For the sake of your chimney and your cat. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Jeff Matevish
My house is still standing.
Drew and Jeff
All right. Well, you try to stay warm. Yeah, you too. It is pretty warm this week. But I think we're gonna get back down to below freezing here. Yeah. This weekend or next week? Yeah. And try to, try to save some money in the process. You know, yeah.
Drew Thomas
If anybody has any, any tips, tricks, anything like that, that they want to share, feel free to throw it in the comments. I always like to hear back from you guys, love to hear your questions, things like that, too, that we can touch on in a different episode. And if you haven't listened to the most recent episode of Bank Chats, had the full episode with this is Bank Chats, but it's the full episode of Bank Chats. The not 2 Cents episode of Bank Chats. We had a really, really interesting conversation with John Valkovci about crypto that's out there right now, so you can check that out too.
Drew Thomas
This podcast focuses on having valuable conversations on various topics related to banking and financial health. The podcast is grounded in having open conversations with professionals and experts with a goal of helping to take some of the mystery out of financial and related topics, as learning about financial products and services can help you make more informed financial decisions. Please keep in mind that the information contained within this podcast and any resources available for download from our website or other resources relating to bank chats, is not intended and should not be understood or interpreted to be financial advice. The host, guests, and production staff of Bank Chats expressly recommend that you seek advice from a trusted financial professional before making financial decisions. The host of Bank Chats is not an attorney, accountant or financial advisor, and the program is simply intended as one source of information. The podcast is not a substitute for financial professionals who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. AmeriServ presents Bank Chats is produced and distributed by AmeriServ Financial Incorporated.
Drew Thomas
Thank you for listening. Please check out our full library of episodes which can be found on the AmeriServ.com website. You can also download or stream the podcast from your favorite podcast app. For now. I'm Drew Thomas, so long.