Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Speaking of electric bills,..

This is my first summer in this house. It's no mansion,....just a house. It's about 1950 square feet with a full, unfinished basement.

It has radiant electric heat in the ceiling panels but I've never used it. I had a new propane furnace and a new central air unit installed as soon as we moved into it. It's also got an 80 gallon electric water heater that should have died years ago. It's a 1992 model and probably not particularly efficient.

I like to be comfortable so I don't scrimp on the air conditioning. I use it like I need to.

I was a bit concerned about what the electric bill was going to be when summer arrived,..especially since we're using electric to heat the water.

It's been a fairly hot summer. May set a record here. It felt like July.

But my highest electric bill has been $120 a month.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Every time the electricity bil arrives I expect there to be some type of correction on it. But it's always between $115 and $120.

It costs a bit to live out here in the winter. Maybe not all that bad. But it hits the wallet when you get a propane fillup,...about $850,...depending on the current price of propane and how low the tank has gotten. I burned a *lot* of wood in this big double sided fireplace to keep our propane cost for the winter below $2000. I think we ended up burning about 850 gallons.

But the summertime cost of being out here is cheap living. I can't believe I'm not paying twice as much for electricity considering how I've been working this air conditioner.

Seems like a bargain


Im cooling about 3200 sqft, with 2 heat pumps on 2 zones. Keep t-stat on 76-78 with ceiling fans.

2- 40gal watr htrs



Gawd our bill averages about $400 a month

Our thing might be attributable to 2 separate outbuildings. Security lights,
I also have 2 refrigerators, 4 deep freezers
hot tub
Swim pool

And 2 teenagers who still leave every dang light switch on.
We do more laundry than Ensign Pulver ever had to.

I have two meter services because my 200 amp box is full, I'm back-feeding via underground 100service at my 3-car garage to serve some breakers 300ft away.

It's like a mini branch davidian compound. lol

having good insulation is a key component. plenty in the ceilings, & walls. believe it or not, but having insulated floors help greatly. it's usually left out as new building budgets get impinged upon, but the floor insulation helps to maintain, and seal in cold air, and keeps the hot out, in the summer. vice versa in the winter.

we do propane, and if we had a bit more global warming maybe my bills might go down a tad?

You might benefit from an old style washer wringer on the back porch, Slum. Youngsters arent so hip on perfectly clean rwhen they require intensive physical labor.

lol,...I don't feel like I'm trying to overly conserve on anything electric. There's only two of us here. I try to make it a point to turn the lights off when I leave a room, but that's about it. We've got an electric cook stove too,...but we don't get too worked up over cooking. We close a couple of the rooms off in the winter because we don't use them, anyway.

I don't know how to explain it. Maybe my meter is bad. I'm not going to see into fixing it, though.

If you are worried about your next bill you can go read the meter. Most utilities include the last reading and the current reading on the bill and the dates. The reading that you take should be more than the reading on your bill.

we buy electro from one of the southern co. divisions. they're not above gouging to the full extent of the law.

don't know if you're on tva pwer, but i surmise they are exactly the same.

we've got big shady oaks and maples around the house.

shade trees and scrubbery helps a lot.

We run about $200 a month in the summer but the house is damn near 100 years old.

In the winter I use about 200-250 gallons of propane and electric is about $90-100 in the winter and propane is about $100.

Here in central Florida, I pay around $124 a month in the summer and $89 in the winter. a/c set at 78 and heat at 72. 1600 sq.ft. double wide. Ceiling fans in all the rooms.

I have had houses that in the 1500-1700 sq ft size, with heat pumps. For years I have been using $150 a month as a milestone for electric. My smaller house didn't have a wood stove, but that was 20 Years ago. I burn wood now in winter, the HP kicks in once in a while. But cooling, we have never gone over the 150 mark. We did once or twice in winter, when it goes below 20, I turn on the emergency heat, a HP is wasting life running below 20.

Have an elderly neighbor couple who just moved from Colo to Arizona.....said his first (July) utility bill was $700.....they have 2 air conditioners running 24/7. Bet he starts deciding that he's OK being a bit warmer.

600 a month in summer and 1200 a month in winter.

I'm on a budget plan where I pay the same amount every month. I'm not sure of my square footage but everyone in the house has a computer thats on all the time, 2 fridge, 2 freezers. I run about $300 a month and have been for the last 10 years.

They send me a bill on how I'm doing compared to my neighbors and I'm always using about 1100 kilowatts more per year than everyone else on my street,

buncha damn tree huggers!

$1400+ for 2017. We have some of the highest damn KWhr and Therm rates in the country. Thank goodness it mostly a Mediterranean type climate. About $600 of that comes in June thru Sept.

Mine......equal payment every month.....$108

right now the biggest power hawg is the 220 AC unit.....

2nd in line would be the electric clothes dryer

Plan is delete the dryer sooon...had the laundry room plumbed for NG

NG ? I pay $57 equal pay every month....purty reasonable

That includes heating a 1500 sq ft garage in the winter & 5 bdr home

gas hot water.....BBQ & firepit

I will take $120.00 any day, summer, winter whatever. Highest bill in the winter I ever had before I got my outdoor wood boiler going was $345.10 in Jan. I was running a heat pump for the house and a split unit for my garage. The following January I was running my wood boiler and my electric bill was $167.33.

House is 2656 SQ. ft. Garage is 1560 SQ. FT. Basement is unheated, its 2656 SQ. FT. stays between 60 and 70 degrees year round no matter the temp.

Summer time electric bill runs about $130.00 if I am still using the outdoor wood boiler to heat my domestic hot water. If I am using an electric hot water heater in summer, its probably about 176.00.

Could it be that your electric company does not come out and physically read rural and semi rural customer's meters every month but maybe quarterly or only twice a year and just 'estimates' usage based on past averages in between physical on site readings?

Local rural co-op power company used to allow and even preferred customers read their own electric meters each month. Customers would write down the reading on supplied cards on or close to the same date each month and mail them in. Every once in a while though they would physically have their own meter readers come and check out customer's meters and confirm customer readings.

You 'win' cuzzin'!


Damn!



Our little house in town is pretty cheap.

Maybe $250 at most in the winter, around $150 during the heat of summer.

Most months around $120.

Maybe,...but the people here before us heated with electric. They mentioned that they payed a budget plan of $375 a month year around for electricity. That's why I put a propane furnace in.

I live in Texas. We just had about ten days where the daily high varied from the low 100s to about 110. Money spent on air conditioning is money well spent. I remember when we didn't have AC; they weren't the good ol' days.