Natural Gas (and oh yea, it's hot out)

This is part 1 of 3 for the energy usage for us, here I'm analyzing the usage of Natural Gas, up next is electricity and then water, maybe Gasoline too, but I've only been keeping track of that since October of 2005.

So regarding the natural gas, I don't have alot to compare the data to, to see if we are efficient, compared to the average American, but I think we do OK anyway, especially since our house was not really built with energy efficiency in mind. I began keeping track of this when we moved into our house in Nov. 2004.

For the first 6 months of 2006, the Ness casa used 284 therms of natural gas. In the same period last year we used 292, so we used 8 less therms of natural gas. NG is used to heat our house, water and we have a natural gas stove for cooking. Unfortunatly we don't keep temperature statistics but here's a breakdown of gas used per day, grouped by month.
So in every month except one, we used less gas. In March of this year, it was MUCH colder this year than last year which explains the discrepancy there. It would be interesting to compare the average temp in each month. Maybe I can find that online somewhere.

Cost? Well the average cost (per month) of our first 6 months in 2005 was $51.43, and in 2006 the average cost was $55.13. The cost per therm of our natural gas only went up about 10.2% (according to my math anyway) . Not bad considering the big scare about high NG prices after the hurricanes last fall.

Ahh- ok, this is my blog so I can blog whatever I want, so if you are bored to death by my energy usage statistics, then wait until the next blog entry where I will return to blogging about who will win the Tour de France, or my blood letting experiences, or something cool like that. Did I mention that it's about 100 degrees here in Bend right now? Yea it's HOT. So this week would mark the official beginning of Summer in central oregon. Needless to say we're not using much natural gas nowadays.

later