A patron wanted to know the average heating usage for 1-bedroom apartments, from October 2007 through March 2008. I warned the patron that this specific a data set was unlikely to be available. The patron reiterated that this was the data sought, regardless. It turned into one of those patron: “this is what I want, what I want is this”, me: “I’ll let you know what I find” exchanges that circle until the patrons stops talking. Those are fun! (no, they’re not)
Anyway. Manner of inquiry aside, I was correct in that I could not find that specific a data set for that recent a time span. However! Older data does get into that kind of specificity.
I started by looking for “average” “home”/”winter” “heating”, neither of which presented much in the way of fruitful returns. I added in the term “thermal units” because the patron had dropped that phrase a half dozen times, indicating that it was the usage, not the cost, that was of interest. This also did not directly lead me to answers, but it did cause “British thermal units” to crop up in a number of returns. That looked familiar and then I saw a page blurb with the abbreviation and went “oh, duh.”
This led to a rearrangement of search terms – now I sought “average” “home” “btu”. Much better. Right away I found a 1997 survey report which showed average residential consumption from the Energy Information Administration, a subset of the U.S. Department of Energy. Backtracking through that site, I was able to find a pair of Residential Energy Consumption Surveys from 2005 that showed average consumption in BTUs for fuel used and energy end use. Further perusal of the site’s resources showed monthly and annual reports on residential energy use, but that was all in total usage, no averages. Furthermore, the two 2005 survey reports included break downs by housing type and size (“apartment, 2-4 units/building”, “apartment, 5 or more units/building”, “1-person household”, “2-person household”, etc.).
Conclusion: Invest in blankets.
Tags: btu, heating, libraries, reference, statistics
