Your choices are pretty limited. However, the first step to reducing energy costs and becoming environmentally friendly is to work on tightening and insulating your home. These steps typically result in the best payoff and last the life of the home, providing a benefit for you and all future owners.

Even if I weren't an "energy consultant", I'd still recommend that you have your house thoroughly reviewed by a professional. A blower door test, duct inspection and infrared (thermal) scan will show you the majority of the problems in your home and allow you to prioritize repairs so you can deal with the big issues first.

A couple questions for you:
what is your climate? I.e. Eastern PA, Northern Maine, etc.
How big is your home?

What are the size, age and model of your heat pump and oil furnace?

Hi Tedsan,

We are in Central NC, so our winter is really December - early March, with the worst of it in January and February.

Our oil furnace is a Carrier Model #58CMA105-1-12, with a Beckett AFG Oil Burner. I believe it is 4 years old. Our heat pump/AC unit is at least 8 years old and is a Carrier 384CC - can't find info on it anywhere, which leads me to believe they don't make it anymore. We just replaced our Carrier coil last year, right after moving in.

When you say have our home 'reviewed by a professional', where do you recommend we start? Look up 'energy consultant' in the phone book? Sorry for being so naive, but we've never had to do this before...

By the way, our house is a brick ranch - so we're all on one level. The furnace is under the living areas of the house, which stay pretty warm, but the bedrooms at the other end of the house NEVER seem to get warm. The duct work under the house is a maze - it was installed in what we (and our HVAC guys) think is an inefficient manner. Unfortunately, the cost to change the duct work is prohibitive for us...

Here are my suggestions to save you some money:
- 68 degrees while in your home 62 while away.
(I assume you have a programmable thermostat.If not get one.)
- Use your storm windows if you have them.
- Remove any AC units left in windows
- Use a draft blocker on outside doors (even just a rolled towel)
- Get some electrical outlet draft blockers at the hardware store.
(You remove the outlet cover; insert the membrane, replace cover.)
- If you find 68 is cold, buy a 30.00 oil-filled electric heater to augment heat in the room your in. They use less energy, you roll it around on wheels.
- Have your oil burner tuned up if you haven't this season.
- Replace your furnace air filter(s)
- You said some rooms are warm others colder;
You can close registers in the warmer ones to direct more heat to the cooler ones.
- You also can close registers in spare rooms or unused rooms.
- Buy some roll insulation and put it in your attic
- You could have your oil man set your furnace fan to come on sooner and stay on longer to extract a little more heat from the furnace.

All these can save you money / fuel costs.
If you are afraid of a 1500.00 bill; have the Oil co. deliver 150 gallons or 200 at a time so you're not hit with a big bill all at once. It has been unusually cold in the Northeast recently, which accounts for increased usage.
- Fill your tank in the warm months when oil price is down and you can get more oil for less money.
Without seeing your unit; I would blame this more on the really cold weather and the high thermostat setting. I would not necessarily replace or switch to gas etc. Propane has less heat per gallon than gas. Gas has less heat per gallon than oil. Price per gallon is what fluctuates; but you could replace your oil backup with gas and not recoop your cost any time soon depending on the market.
-br

In addition to the excellent input above, and to get a handle on the scope of your problem you should tell us, if you can:
the living area in square feet
the exact location of the house e.g. xxx, NC
the date you last filled the tank
and since oil is cheap now, fill it up now and record the gallons to fill it.
The above will quantify of the scope of your problem. It should yield heating degree days per gallon per square foot of living area which is a direct measure of the oil heating efficiency.