I was having a conversation with my father last night. He lives in northern Vermont, almost on the Canadian border. We almost (luckily) avoided politics, which we usually have to put on boxing gloves for when we have discussions. I don’t know if his skewed views are from his surroundings in Vermont, from Canada, or if he has radically changed in his older years from the person I knew growing up. But we disagree on everything.
He happened to mention that my brother-in-law, who lives in Connecticut with my sister and has been retired for several years, was asked to take a temporary job and jumped at the chance. If you’ve ever driven through Pennsylvania and looked at the sides of the roads as they cut through the hills, you may have noticed the ridges in the stone in the hills. Those ridges are made by jackhammers. That’s what my brother-in-law did all his life…run the jackhammer while making roads. He made good money but lost his hearing doing it.
My sister and her family are down-to-earth country people. They, like so many people in the Northeastern United States, heat their homes with oil furnaces. They have to plan ahead in summer as to how much oil they believe they will need for the winte, as they have to pay for it all at once. There is no budget billing as with the electric/gas company. When my brother-in-law that took that phone call, he took the job knowing that the price of furnace oil was going to cost so much he didn’t know how he was going to afford it.
Our electric bills in the midwest are horrible enough, but could you imagine paying $5 a gallon when you need 800 gallons of heating oil? I expect we will hear of many deaths this coming winter from people who couldn't afford heat. Many more than usual.
These are typical wood pellets, produced primarily as a wood
industry by-product for use as a heating fuel. (MPR Photo/Bob Kelleher)
Enter the creation of wood pellets....for people who can afford the initial switchover to a new furnace...
What a great concept.
Homeowners who use heating oil see alternatives à here
