How We Saved 31% on our Heating this Winter

An example of changing one’s orientation

Our little friend (Source: author)

A few weeks ago, I wrote about our strategy to save money on our heating bill this winter. I explain in detail the strategy and the thinking behind it there.

Heat the Person Not the House

I wrote that because I was pretty chuffed about the natural gas bill showing that by switching off central heating we had reduced our natural gas usage 76% over the winter. I was almost certain that we had saved a significant amount of money, but we hadn’t yet received the electric bill. An oddity of the Czech energy utilities is that they settle the bills annually — March for natural gas and April for electricity — which set the payment amounts for the next year.

So how much did we save all told switching from whole-house gas heating to space electric heating? Our electric usage went up, of course, but not as much as the gas usage went down. All told, our gas plus electric costs this past year were 31% less than the year before.

I share all of this information not to brag but as an example of how changing…