First, you have to realize that the weather is different every year, some colder than others, so you don't compare that year with the prior year, so what I did is go back 10 years in which I used 341,582 hours and got a yearly average of 34,158 per year or 9,995 per year more than with the heat pump. Now, just based on the number of hours we're talking about savings of approximately $600 a year, but due to the increase of fuel adjustments, customer charges, taxes, etc., you might not feel the savings, but they are still there. In fact, I can show where I paid $1,530 this past year for 24,000 hours and $1,507 in 2003 for 34,000 hours, so even though we don't have rate increases and we still have the cheapest in the nation. Our total bill for the year will show $300 or $400 increase. In fact, the heat pump brought my KU bill back to $1,500 a year as it had been for a few years, but in 2005 and 2006 the bill jumped to $1,843 and $1,909, even though the kilowatt hours were less than the $1,500 years. So that tells us that even though the rates didn't go up, something did. We've got to remember that if coal goes up, we pay.
Now, since we know the cost difference, we'll talk about the heat difference. I might mention the fact that I chose baseboard when I built my house in 1970, because I had Doug Lee, representing KU, to estimate the cost, and it was very reasonable. For instance, in January 1972 I used 3,200 kilowatt hours and my electric bill was $52. Actually, the bills stayed low until 1975 when the fuel adjustment increased our bill a lot, and the fuel adjustment finally got so high they had to add it on to the rates per kilowatt-hour, and I think it might happen again if coal keeps going up. So, now I've got to give my choice and nope, you didn't guess right. I wish I'd never seen a heat pump. I love the baseboard heat and never had to replace one in 36 years. There ain't no fans or motors to worry about, so all you do worry about is the power going off. I should have put central air in just to have good air conditioning and kept the baseboard heat. They all talk about a heat pump putting out a different kind of heat that even feels like cool air coming out the vents, and you have to get use to it. Well, the way we get used to it is turn on a baseboard heater when it's cold weather. I kept some of the baseboard heaters just in case and I'm glad I did.
Summer time is when you enjoy the heat pump because of its air conditioning. It beats that old window job. I could have taken a lot of space and put the heat pump in the center of the basement and naturally got more even heat in every room, but I kept my walking space and piped the heat around the walls out of the way, but that causes more heat in one end of the home than the other, and that just ain't good, but like I say, if it's too cold in a couple rooms, turn on a heater. It won't cost much more. One other thing, we're not the 72 degree type. Our favorite numbers are 76 at night and 77 and 78 during the day.
I hate that this subject took up so much of my speech, but this is good information that people need to know. Now, is the heat pump cheaper? Yep. Warmer? Nope. Pay more for baseboard heat? Yep, but stay warmer and quieter and don't worry about the extra cost because you would just spend it on something else anyway.
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I read where this tornado in Arkansas killed five people, and I believe that, but it went on to say that it carried a cow nearly a mile away from its home, and that is just hard to believe. If that was true, it probably gave milk at its next milking, already churned. That sounded to me like somebody competing in the liar of the year contest. The fellow that won it one year said that a wind storm picked up their old iron kettle out of their yard and took it through the air so fast that lightning struck at it three times and never did hit it.
Reckon how long it will take us to start believing in polls again? Harry and Hillary beat all the odds and all the polls so much that even the news media feels ashamed. They even apologized for being misled by the pollsters and passing it on to us. Some of them say that the voters lied on who they were for, but if they thought they lied then, why are they now telling us how many women voted for so-and-so or how many young people voted for so-and-so or how many blacks voted for so-and-so? How did they know this if they didn't even know how they voted? I think it's just the news media practicing psychology on us hoping well vote for their choice, which is normally Republican.
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Some people don't like crows, and you can't blame them if it's because they raid their gardens or something like that. I just notice at daylight every morning they are flying around in the fog making that caw-caw sound, and for some reason I like hearing them. I feed birds in the mornings, and sometimes the crows will pick up the nerve to get some, but not much.
Just yesterday, I saw about a dozen raising cain, and they had a hoot owl cornered in a tree, and they done everything in their power to get that owl to fly, so they could attack him, I guess, but the old owl just sat there, knowing that they couldn't do nothing but harass him. They finally gave up trying to scare him, so they just gathered in a tree next to him to wait him out, but I decided to shoot a couple firecrackers to scare them away, and I guess he just waited there 'til after dark then went on about his business.
Hawks are another thing I like. I love the way they sail through the air, but we don't see many anymore. Crows aggravate them, too, but the hawk always prevails.
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Do you get so bored listening to all them candidates wanting to be president so much that you don't care for nary one of them? If somebody like Al Gore don't step in and be the nominee for the Democrats, we'll probably continue under the Bush plan four more years.
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Often we see chicken noodle and tomato soup two for a dollar. Why don't they let us have vegetable or vegetable beef two for a dollar every now and then?
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Keep praying for the soldiers and their families and for this war to end.
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