Energy Efficiency

Wintertime in New England, living in a home built in 1916, certainly raises some questions about our energy efficiency. We use heating oil to heat our home, and natural gas for our hot water. Since the price of oil is way lower than it was last winter, we turned our focus towards our natural gas consumption.

I dug out the folder containing our past Connecticut Natural Gas bills and whipped up this chart using my good friend Excel:

Christopher and I are always looking for ways to improve the energy efficiency of our home. From what this chart indicates, it would appear that our gas consumption is significantly lower during the summer months. So, we're gonna look into an insulation blanket for our hot water tank (new in August 2007) since they are relatively inexpensive and we already insulated our pipes last year.

As a side note - I am feeling a mixture of pride in the geekiness of my analysis combined with embarassment of the fact that I am proud. And I did this whole thing on a Friday night to boot - definitely a sign that I'm getting old, or that I need a hobby!