Since my wife and I moved to Western Massachusetts in the summer of 2022, we’ve been working with Berkshire Community Action Council to make our house more sustainable as far as heating and electricity are concerned. We heat with an oil-fueled furnace which runs a steam radiator system that also provides our hot water.

Things we’ve done so far:

• Replaced all the windows in the house
• Fully insulated the attic and the downstairs walls
• Trinity Solar installed 15 solar panels on the roof. Our house faces due East and West, so 9 panels are on the east-facing roof, and 6 are on the west-facing roof
• Installed two ceiling fans, one in the main bedroom and the other in the living room

Through a BCAC program, we had been considering replacing the oil furnace with a heat pump system, but the rules for the program say that there can be no heat unit in the basement (where my wife has her weaving studio), and you can’t keep the oil furnace as backup heating source. Given the coldness of the winters here, and the challenge of our house’s floor plan (many smallish rooms), we recently decided to forgo the heat pump and stick with the oil furnace for the time being.

Our rooftop solar panels feed into the grid; we do not have any batteries. We pay aproximately $111.00 a month for the panels, which are on a 30-year loan. Our plan is to pay them off earlier.

Eight months out of the year – April through November – our solar panels generate more electricity than we use. We haven’t had to pay National Grid for electricity since the west-facing panels were installed in 2024. We’re currently carrying a $618 credit on our electric bill.

Our oil bill is about $2000 a year.

Some things I want to research (and will publish here):

• If we were to install electric heaters on walls throughout the house, could we run the oil furnace lower, thus using less oil and more of the electric credit? The goal would be to shift the heating to electric to use the credit being generated.
• Should we get at least one battery? We have very few outages, and so far (knock wood) they have been short-lived.
• Because our hot water is created by the oil furnace, we have to leave it on all summer. Should we buy a heat pump water heater and have it installed? Or an on-demand water heater?
• Should we replace the washer and dryer (electric) with an all-in-one ventless washer/dryer and install it upstairs?

I’m certain other things will arise, including eventually replacing our aging cars with an EV (perhaps with the addition of more solar panels).