[Ford Man]

I'm trying something new this winter. Last winter I noticed just how much cold was coming off the windows in our house. This year I have covered all the windows with foil radiant barrier. It makes the house dark needing a light burning, but during the daytime I'm the only one at home and spend 99% of my time in the living room. I use a 1W LED for light in the living room and have (3) 1/4W LED night lights 1 in each bathroom and 1 in the kitchen so I can see how to get around. We already only used the 1W LED at night in the living room while watching television. Usually if I need light in another room it's only for a few minutes at a time and I'll turn on an overhead light with a 9W or 13W CFL bulb. There's a chance there will be sunny days where I'll lose a little bit of heat from the sun, but at night and on cold or cloudy days it will probably more than make up the difference in heat loss through the glass. The radiant barrier will reflect the outdoor cold away from the living space and the indoor heat back toward the living space. I'm also going to get some Velcro with adhesive on them and fix it so I can open and close the foil with little effort on warm/sunny days. During much of the winter by the time my wife gets home from work it's already dark enough she needs light in the kitchen while preparing dinner, so really very little extra cost associated with lighting. We use a vented/thermostatically controlled Monitor kerosene heater for heat. Saturday night the low was 24* here, I filled the heater about 10PM and set the thermostat on 64* for the night during the time we were in bed, between 10PM and 8:30AM we used about a quart of kerosene. Since Saturday night, with lows in the 20's, 30's and 40's, highs in the 60's we've used approximately 3/4 gallon of kerosene to heat approximately 1K SF (extra bedrooms closed off, no heat). I keep the heater set at 64* at night and 68* during the daytime. If this works good during the winter with heat savings I'm also going to try it during the summer with a/c cooling costs. I already have radiant barrier underneath the metal roof on the house. Last winter I heated about 1200 SF on about 150 gallons of kerosene for the winter. Since we moved here in Oct. 2010 and I had the radiant barrier and new metal roof put on the house in spring 2011 our highest electric bill has been just over $100 for the month, with it normally running $70-$90 per month during the summer cooling about 1200 SF and $45-$55 per month during the winter