An 18% fuel savings! That's great news!
Thanks for tracking all that and posting.
Out of curiosity, how much did you pay per bag for the coal this year? I did a quick calc. Adjusting for the different burning season lengths and using a $5/bag price, I figured you saved around $139 in coal this year.
Also, when you said "original alaska controls" did you mean their manual controls or did you mean Alaska thermostat controls?
And just for the record and for those interested:
Lexington, KY Heating Degree Days
data from:
ftp://ftp.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/htdocs/products/analysis_monitoring/cdus/degree_days/archives/Heating%20degree%20Days/Monthly%20City/09/06-03/07: 78, 365, 518, 717, 870, 1049, 414 = total 4011 heating degree days
09/07-03/08: 13, 167, 582, 770, 989, 852, 637 = total 4010 heating degree days
Didn't include April since they don't have data for it for this year yet and I didn't want to dig through weekly data. Regardless, they look like pretty even years in term of overall heating demand over that 7 month period. However, you posted that you heated for 164 days this year vs 150 last year. That means you only burned for around 5 to 5.5 months. Assuming you stopped around the same time each year (perhaps stopping a touch earlier last year), you can lop off the sept. and oct. months in each list and by doing so you end up with higher heating demand this year compared to last. So it was actually about 7% colder outside while using the Coal-trol this year compared to the prior year with the Alaska controls, meaning it netted even better than the 18% or so fuel savings in the average fuel use you measured.
The only thing that could screw up this glorious analysis (and I'm kicking myself for pushing my luck

)... Did you keep the house at the same 73 degrees last year?