My husband and I weren’t cheap, but we were frugal.
We didn’t have money to throw away, and in purchasing a new furnace, we wanted to get the best for what we could afford.
We didn’t want to give up savings for efficiency, but we didn’t want to give up on efficiency just to save a little of money. We wanted to compromise between savings and efficiency. After a long discussion and a lot of research, we knew what we wanted in efficiency ratings. We figured that for the extra money we would spend on an energy and heat efficient furnace, we would save on the energy bills. That would be a bigger payback for us, than just saving money. With the cost of energy nowadays, every penny we saved was a big plus. Oil is now $6 a gallon, and we want to use as little as possible. Until it becomes a necessity to use the oil, we are using our wood-burning stove, but we can only get wood for so long. Once the snow starts, it cuts our wood shed off to us because of where it is located. That’s when we’ll be using the furnace. We have a bit of time to decide which furnace we want, but if snow comes earlier, it cuts our decision time in half. Next month, we’ll purchase the new furnace, and keep it on just enough to keep the chill out of the house until the wood-burning stove warms the house up. Conservation and quality of life are our two chief concerns this winter.