What are you paying to heat your home?

It will cost me around $2850 to heat my home in 2009 if oil prices don't continue to climb. Which they will. Yep, our 1958 home burns oil -- mmmm -- tasty, tasty oil. (Well, it's a biodiesel blend...5% biodiesel. Woo hoo.) Our rates just skyrocketed, so it costs us $212 per month for our oil (we're on this plan that spreads out the payments, and includes maintenance and oil tank insurance, rather than paying a mighty lump sum with each oil delivery). Then there's the additional $30-$40 per month on the electric bill to power the furnace during Portland's long winter months. I'm trying to figure out how to get these numbers down short of blowing several holes in the roof and setting small fires in each room (which I've discovered is actually an inefficient way to heat a house. Sigh.)

This factoid made me feel much better:

The Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration projects average household heating costs to be $1,152 this winter, a $166 increase over last year and $359 more than five years ago. Over half of America's homes are heated with natural gas, which is expected to cost $162 more per household than last year. Hardest hit of all are those homeowners who use heating oil, which, like gasoline, is made from petroleum. They are expected to shell out over $500 more per household than last year. From the Heritage Foundation.

My husband and I looked into converting to gas a few years ago, but it would have cost several thousands of dollars. This side-by-side comparison of oil to gas made me feel OK about our choice. (Granted, these were numbers from two years ago.) Even with the high price of oil I still don't want natural gas coming into our home. The ideal situation would be to have an affordable, planet-friendly heating system -- something like solar-powered radiant floor heat. So I did the calculation over at the Energy Trust of Oregon, and even with all of the rebates and tax credits it would cost around $17,000 to install solar panels and it would only take 25 years to make it pay off! And that doesn't include the cost of ripping up all of our floors to install the heating panels!

Down, girl.

I'm trying to wrap my head around it all. Because I'm a stay-at-home mom, I'm home most days with my preschooler. Turning off the heat during the day is not an option, though our programmable thermostat is set to turn off during sleeping hours. And, with the exception of the laundry room, we use every room in our house every day. The rooms furthest from the furnace are a bit chilly (like my office right now...hard to type with numb fingers.) A friend mentioned radiant heat wall panels, which (I think) you install behind drywall, which would be less invasive. I guess you'd turn these on whenever you were spending time in a particular room, like the bathroom. Does anyone have these?

Over the past few years we've replaced all of our windows and have injected insulation into all of our exterior walls and attic space. It seems like we're pretty tight. We keep the thermostat at 68 during the day, though we might try taking it down a couple of notches. I dunno. It's all tricky. We're doing other things, too, like installing weather-stripping on an old door. Here's a list of 50 ways to lower home heating bills. I didn't know that bathroom and stovetop fans actually cool the air, and it's recommended you don't use these during the winter.

How do you heat your home, and what are you paying? Are you doing anything to lower your costs or make your home more heat-efficient?