PST FTN

The costs of controlling your indoor air temperature by heating and/or cooling should be a major factor in your assessment of a prospective home. After housing payments and food, energy costs are the largest single expense item in most households, absorbing up to 10 percent of the family budget. You want your dream house and its heating system to be as energy-efficient as possible, of course, but you need to know the truth about the trospect before you. It’s one of the most important questions you can ask about a house: how much does it cost to operate?

You should request to see the utility bills for at least the two previous years. This is the only way to get a good idea of what the energy costs of a particular house are likely to be.
Utility companies in most areas will provide energy audits at
little or no cost, and you might consider obtaining one (or asking
the current owner to do so) before you buy.
An energy audit will also suggest improvements that would
cut down on energy costs, such as insulating the hot-water pipes
or replacing the furnace.
What should you expect to pay for heating and cooling? National generalizations suggest a gross range, but beyond that they are meaningless, if’ only because the figures cover so many different climates and there can be such wide variation even from house to house in the same neighborhood. But the following stats (compiled by the Energy Information Institute) will give you a sense of what’s common across the country and in selected states.
Average annual energy costs per person:
- Highest: $3,362 a year (Alaska)
• Lowest: $1,449 a year (New York)
- National average: $1,847
Average heating-oil prices (in terms of millions
of BTU’s — British thermal units — delivered):
- Highest: $8.55 (Vermont)
- Lowest: $6.55 (Louisiana)
- National average: $7.56
Average natural-gas prices (per million BTIJ’s):
- Highest: $7.41 (Maine)
• Lowest: $1.19 (Alaska)
- National average: $4.60
Average electricity prices (per million BTU’s):
- Highest: $30.96 (Hawaii)
- Lowest: $9.54 (Washington State)
- National average: $19.85
It’s also interesting to stack the same sort of data a different
way to compare the costs of different heating and cooling system.