When Jeanne White sits down in her home to watch television or read during the winter, she'll clutch her hot-water bottle underneath her robe.
It's not the most effective way to stay warm but, with oil prices still near $4 a gallon, it's the most affordable.
"I'm going to be skinny because I can't afford the food and I'm going to be frozen because I can't afford the heat," said White, a 90-year-old Ossining resident. "But I have my hot-water bag."
She said she paid $3.09 a gallon for oil to get through last winter. This year, she signed a contract that caps her price at $4.74 a gallon. That means her dealer is guaranteeing she will not pay more than that price regardless of what oil markets do.
Lately, oil prices have been dropping as economies around the world join the U.S. economy in declining. But the prices are still much higher than a year ago.
A gallon of No. 2 heating oil averaged $4.17 a gallon across the United States last month, after reaching a record $4.39 in July.
A year ago, the price was $2.73 a gallon.
Natural-gas users are paying more, too, though they are not getting hit as hard. The residential price of natural gas was $19.05 per thousand cubic feet last month, a 14.4 percent jump in a year.
Oil dealers say the average house in Westchester County uses about 1,200 gallons of oil a winter. That means a customer who bought a winter's supply in August would have spent $5,004, using the average national price as a guide. A year ago, that same supply would have cost $3,276.
The high prices have desperate folks looking into new ways to keep warm during a winter in which the chilliness of the nights may be surpassed only by the freeze in the economy.
Donald Cottle, a paramedic supervisor in Westchester County, recently was in Fire Glow Distributors, a Jefferson Valley store that sells wood-burning stoves, pellet stoves and other equipment, to get advice on how to move a coal-burning stove he has in his East Fishkill home. He said he plans to make some improvements in the kitchen.
He said his coal and wood stoves have been big money savers for him the past two years as oil prices have risen.
"I think you can keep the house warm without feeling like you're overloading the budget, without feeling guilty about how much you're spending," he said.
He said he burns hard coal, which produces limited emissions.
Cottle said that in January he managed to use only about 2 gallons of oil a day in his home, thanks to the stoves.
John Meeker, Fire Glow's owner, said wood stoves and pellet stove inserts - which fit into a fireplace - are in huge demand.
The Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association reports that sales of wood stove inserts are up 73 percent this year, while pellet stove inserts are up 130.5 percent.
A unit and installation can cost up to $5,000, but Meeker said that, with today's oil prices, a homeowner can make that money back in three years.
He said his business never experienced the expected lull in business in March, April and May, as winter turned to spring.
Meeker said that, in past years, a customer who placed an order now might get a stove in four to six weeks, well in time for the heating season. But now someone who orders might not get a stove until January.
He said he ordered 80 stoves in June and planned to take delivery on them in August. That has been pushed back to December, he said. He placed an additional order for 90 stoves but the manufacturer said it can provide only 50.
Pellets, which come from sawdust, could be in short supply this winter because of the slump in the construction industry, Meeker said. He advises people to buy now.
"The old adage is that if you have them in your garage, there's no shortage," he said.
That's also true if you have trees on your property and are handy with an ax, like David DeBellis of Yorktown.
DeBellis just bought a wood stove insert for his family room fireplace at Home & Hearth in Cortlandt and plans to harvest locust trees from his 2-acre property to feed it during the winter.
"The only concern I have is, splitting wood is probably the worst thing to do for your body. My shoulder was killing me after spending a month of weekends splitting wood," he said.
He spent $3,800 for the insert and $600 more on installation, a cost he expects will pay for itself in three to four years.
"What made me do this, of course, is oil prices are going through the roof," he said. "Last year, I locked in at $2.94 a gallon. Now, it's over $4. To me, it's financially catastrophic to spend $1,300 for a tank of oil. Last year, I burned three to four tanks in winter. If I can get it down to a tank and a half, it's a big savings for me."
The high price of oil and natural gas is particularly tough on senior citizens, who often rely on some combination of Social Security, pensions and investment income to get by.
That's enough to convince Marie Abramson of Sleepy Hollow, 78, that she has to keep her thermostat at a chilly 62 degrees, except for Sundays when her family gathers for dinner.
Despite her austerity campaign, her bill reaches $400 a month during the winter, she said.
"I dress with six layers or more," she said. "My kids and friends yell at me all the time. They say, 'Marie, for God's sake, turn up your heat.' But I don't feel like spending $600 or $700 a month. Four hundred dollars is bad enough."
Abramson said she's also thinking of replacing her gas furnace with a new, more energy-efficient one.
Others are unsure of what to do next.
Jean Siclare, 82, of Port Chester said she and her husband have replaced windows and doors, added insulation and taken a number of other steps to make their nine-room home more energy efficient.
Despite their efforts, they spent nearly $5,000 on oil last year and know they'll spend more this year, though they have not signed a contract with a dealer yet, she said.
She said they have tried using an electric blanket at night so they could keep the temperature in the house lower. But they didn't like getting up during the night with the house so cold.
Siclare said her husband has had health problems and needs the house to be 70 degrees or more during the day.
"Social services told us to wear mittens, a hat and a jacket and keep the house at 68 degrees," she said. "But I can't do that to my husband."
The high energy prices are tough on consumers but provide opportunities for entrepreneurs willing to provide products and services to ease the burden.
David Singer, the president of Robison Oil Corp. in Elmsford, said Robison has a new subsidiary called Comfort Safe Solutions that examines people's homes to determine what improvements they can make to save energy.
The company also sells products to make heating and cooling systems run more efficiently.
One popular item has been a microprocessor made by IntelliDyne that fits onto a boiler, he said.
The microprocessor gauges the temperature of the water as it leaves and then re-enters the boiler, Singer said. It calculates the difference in those temperatures and signals the boiler whether it can run at a lower intensity, he said.
The item costs about $1,200, but Singer said the manufacturer guarantees that it will reduce consumption by 10 percent. He said there's evidence it can save up to 20 percent for some homeowners.
If a homeowner uses 1,200 gallons of oil in a winter and the microprocessor reduces that by 10 percent, or 120 gallons, that homeowner would save about $500 in a year at $4 a gallon.
In less than three years, the homeowner will have recouped the investment.
Comfort Safe also sells a device for hot-air, air-conditioning and hydro-air systems that causes the system to run around the clock at the most efficient level possible instead of going on and off, depending on the temperature.
"This is not stuff you can buy off a shelf at Home Depot, because it has to be installed professionally," Singer said.
Top: Joe Senche of Home & Hearth in Cortlandt installs a wood-burning stove insert in the fireplace of a Yorktown home.
Staff writer Julie Moran Alterio contributed to this report.
Reach Allan Drury at adrury@lohud.com or 914-694-5069.
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