37 winters hauling heating oil

Forty Winters of Alaska Cold, Written Down

A hundred and twenty six pages, twenty five methods, one per chapter, cheapest first.

“I drove heating oil around North Pole for thirty-seven winters. Same houses, same cold, wildly different bills. I wrote down what I saw work, cheapest first.”

— Gene Halvorsen, North Pole, Alaska

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Launch price $37 · ends October 13, 2026 · then $59

$37 once. No subscription. Download today.

The paperback of A Thousand Cold Houses on a workbench beside a coil of rope caulk, a screwdriver, and a pair of leather gloves.
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No. 2 · The bill

The Government's Number for Last Winter

The government's energy office figured the average household heating with electricity spent about $1,133 last winter, give or take.

A heating bill, reading glasses, and a pen on a kitchen table, an old round thermostat on the wall, snow outside the window.

That figure's an average across the whole country, not a promise about your house. Yours is whatever's printed at the bottom of your own bill, and that's the one worth watching.

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Keep scrolling if you want the numbers.
Two weathered hands around a mug of coffee at a frosted kitchen window, snow and spruce outside at first light.126 pages · PDF · 2026
No. 3 · The book

What's Actually In the Book

This is A Thousand Cold Houses. Twenty-five methods, one per chapter, ordered cheapest first. The first five chapters cost nothing. After that, most fixes run under twenty-five dollars. A few cost more — an annual furnace service is the one I tell people to spend on, once a year, before the cold really sets in. Anything that burns fuel needs air and an alarm, and that's true whether you read it here or on the safety page up front.

Every chapter has a price, a time, and a house where I watched it work. There's a printable checklist in the back — sixty lines you can tear out and tape to the furnace door. It's the whole book boiled down to one page.

See all 25 methods
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This is what you'd actually get, itemized.
No. 4 · The delivery ticket
G. Halvorsen · Heating Oil
North Pole, Alaska · Route Ticket
Order Ticket — A Thousand Cold HousesNo. 2026-037 · Copy 1
Date: winter 2026Delivered to: Your House, This Winter

What You Get for $37

  • A Thousand Cold Houses — 126-page PDF, 25 methods$59
  • The checklist — printable, tape it to the furnace door$7
  • Gene's Fifty-Dollar Kit — the shopping list, priced$9
  • Twelve Questions to Ask Before You Pay a Furnace Guy — printable$11
Everything on its own$86
$37$59
Paid once, thirty-seven dollars, no refill truck coming in January.
Get the book — $37
30
DAYIf it's not useful, email me. 30 days, no questions, you keep the book. I'd rather you have it and never write back than argue about a refund. 30 days, no questions, you keep the book.

Launch price $37 · ends October 13, 2026 · then $59

No. 5 · The math

The Bet, Side by Side

Turn the thermostat up
Costs whatever the furnace burns to catch up, nobody knows exactly.
Feels warmer for an hour, then the bill just went up.
No hole gets found. No draft gets fixed.
Might work for a night. Doesn't fix a windy house.
Same house. Same holes.
Read the book first
Painter's tape, four dollars, chapter six.
Window film kit, twelve dollars, chapter seven.
Door sweep, fifteen dollars, chapter eight.
All twenty-five methods and the checklist, thirty-seven dollars total.
$4 + $12 + $15 + $37 for the book

Here's the bet. Three fixes from the book run about thirty-one dollars altogether, and they're the ones I'd try first in any house I walked into. I can't tell you what they'll do to your bill — I don't know your house, your furnace, or your walls. I can tell you the whole book, all twenty-five, costs thirty-seven dollars.

“Fix the door first. Argue about the thermostat later.”

The winter figure is the average for a home on electric heat, EIA Winter Fuels Outlook, October 15, 2025 (source).
The fix prices are the ones printed in the book. Nobody can promise you a number; your bill is your bill.

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Eight parts, one book, no upsell inside.
No. 6 · What's inside

25 methods. 8 parts. Cheapest first.

PART 12 CH.

Find the leaks

  1. The Flashlight Walk
  2. Read the Bill Like an Oil Man
PART 26 CH.

Seal it, cheapest first

  1. Four Dollars of Tape and a Roll of Rope Caulk
  2. The Twelve-Dollar Window
  3. Sweeps, Snakes, and a Rolled Towel
  4. Gaskets Behind the Plates
  5. Weatherstrip the Hatches
  6. Seal Around, Never Over
PART 34 CH.

Warm the body, not the box

  1. The Sixty-Two Degree Bedroom
  2. Wool Under the Sheet
  3. The Hot Water Bottle and the Heating Pad
  4. Slippers With a Sole and a Base Layer
PART 43 CH.

Dials, fans, and damp

  1. Leave the Thermostat Alone
  2. Twenty Minutes, Then Off
  3. The Ten-Dollar Hygrometer
PART 53 CH.

Windows, floors, and the air under them

  1. Curtains to the Sill, Closed at Dark
  2. The Rug and the Reason the Floor Is Cold
  3. Skirting, Tight, Before October
PART 62 CH.

Water and pipes

  1. Cabinet Doors Open, Faucet Trickling
  2. One-Twenty on the Dial
PART 72 CH.

Heating one room

  1. One Heater, One Room, Straight Into the Wall
  2. Live in Two Rooms Without Freezing the Other Seven
PART 83 CH.

The furnace, and what to spend on

  1. The Filter on the First of the Month
  2. The One Spend Gene Defends: Annual Service
  3. The Contractor Question

*Eight parts, one house at a time, cheapest first, straight through to the checklist.*

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One price, one download, nothing else to buy.
Daylight showing under the bottom of a front door, a rolled towel on the floor in front of it.
Daylight under a door, a rolled towel waiting.
No. 7 · The quiet advantage

The Quiet Advantage

Most people don't know what to fix first. They call somebody, get a bid, and start there. That's backwards. The cheap end of the problem is almost always sitting right in front of you — a gap, a sweep worn flat, a hatch left cracked. You don't need a tool belt to find it. You need to know where to look.

That's the advantage, really. Not a bigger furnace, not a smarter thermostat. Just knowing which twenty minutes to spend first. I've watched people spend five thousand dollars before they ever tried four dollars of tape. The order matters more than the tool.

Once you know the order, you look at your own house differently. You stop guessing. You start walking the walls with a flashlight instead of waiting on a stranger's opinion. That's not confidence I'm selling you. That's just what the order looks like, written down.

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Compare the fix to the forecast, hedged both ways.
Gene Halvorsen in a knit cap and tan work jacket, standing in his garage doorway with snow on the ground outside.
No. 9 · The author

Gene Halvorsen

Retired oil-route driver, North Pole, Alaska

“I've been inside a thousand cold houses, and I quit counting around 2000.”

I hauled heating oil out of North Pole for thirty-seven winters, out past Chena Hot Springs Road and up the Steese on the bad weeks. Same driveways, year after year. I got so I could guess a tank's gallons before the hose ever went in, and the guess always came down to the house, never the furnace.

Alongside the route I kept an eye on houses for people wintering Outside — pipes, thermostats, roofs. That put me inside places I'd never have seen from a truck seat: dry cabins, drafty log houses, an apartment block where people slept with a window cracked in February. A thousand houses, by my own rough count, and I finally wrote down what they taught me.

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Same houses, same cold, different bills, that's the story.
No. 10 · The ticket, again
G. Halvorsen · Heating Oil
North Pole, Alaska · Plain Terms
Order Ticket — A Thousand Cold HousesNo. 2026-037 · Copy 2 · Same terms
Date: winter 2026Delivered to: Your House, This Winter

What You Get for $37

  • A Thousand Cold Houses — 126-page PDF, 25 methods$59
  • The checklist — printable, tape it to the furnace door$7
  • Gene's Fifty-Dollar Kit — the shopping list, priced$9
  • Twelve Questions to Ask Before You Pay a Furnace Guy — printable$11
Everything on its own$86
$37$59
No app · No login · A PDF you can keep, print, and hand down
Get the book — $37
30
DAYIf it's not useful, email me. 30 days, no questions, you keep the book. I'd rather you have it and never write back than argue about a refund. 30 days, no questions, you keep the book.

Launch price $37 · ends October 13, 2026 · then $59

No. 11 · Before you ask

Plain answers.

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30 days, no questions, you keep the book.
No. 12 · Last call

The Same Price Either Way

Thirty-seven dollars gets you the whole book, right now, same as it will next week.

A checklist with pencil ticks taped to the front of a basement furnace, a water heater beside it.
Get the book $37 $59

Launch price ends October 13, 2026, then it's fifty-nine dollars.