Forums | MacLife

Yeah, you're talking about your entire farm, which is a whole nother ballgame.  I'm sure that if I looked at the electricity bill for the buildings here at work, it would be massive.  If you could break it down to just the power you use to run your house, then we'd be talking comparable numbers.

Here in Dallas, we average 250 to 300 a month during the summer for a 2000 sq ft house. Occupied all day as one of us works from home, and we keep the set point at 78 degrees.

Been running over 100 degrees for several weeks, and doesn't get below 82 at night.

At least this isn't Houston where the humidity is high.

Malkin wrote:

Well everybody, I must apologize.  I was wrong about my electric bill.  We got the new statement in the mail today, and we used the most power ever since moving into this house.

Our total bill this month was $26.96.

So my question is, what the heck do you guys DO that your power bills are so darn high!  I have a three bedroom house.  Aaron works at home and runs our window AC unit nearly all day long.  Now like I said before, I know the two of us seem to have a natural tendency to conserve more than others, but really!  I can't imagine having electric bills in the hundreds of dollars.  How many kWh are you using each month?  We used the most ever at 380.  Usually we're under 300.  We have a gas water heater, but our stove, dishwasher, and our washer and drier are all electric.  Really, I'm a bit baffled.

Please, all of you with the big bills.  Do a favor for the environment and your pocketbook!  http://www.energystar.gov/

Well, for one thing, you could add the cost of your gas water heater to the bill. That's a real hog (for electricity). I'm seriously thinking of installing a few on-demand heaters under my sinks instead.

Last edited by user (2006-07-24 3:18 pm)

Electric heat is horribly inefficient.

Other ways to save energy: Only wash large loads, never medium or small.
Hand wash dishes in the sink, don't use the dishwasher.

Malkin wrote:

Well everybody, I must apologize.  I was wrong about my electric bill.  We got the new statement in the mail today, and we used the most power ever since moving into this house.

Our total bill this month was $26.96.

Heh, heh. Last spring our power bills were around $15, in summer  - around $6.75, in October - $1.98. I finally called Edison, because they can be real smurf if people 'steal' power and they have to backbill you. Our electric meter had just died a slow agonizing death.  Since I, as a concerned customer, called them first, they just replaced the meter, and didn't hassle me.

Our first real clue was the summer before when my father-in-law lived in a trailer on our property, running the air conditioner constantly(with the door open half the time), and our bills were never more than $60.

So it may be your meter, or it may be that you live in the state with the lowest electric bills, and homes that are generally well built. As Pastor Macman related, not all houses in CA are efficiently built (not by a long shot). About half the houses where I live were built in the late 60s, early 70s, when electricity was practically free, so they are all electric homes. No double pane windows, 2X4 Exterior walls, etc. Also code enforcement was lax until about 10 years ago.

Geeze if we had electric heat, our electric bill would quadruple!  Our house has no insulation in the walls, it has very large single pane windows, and you can usually feel a bit of a draft in winter.  It was built in 1914 and was originally heated by a single wood stove in the kitchen.  All that heated the upstairs was a single vent in the floor directly above the stove.  BRRRRRR!  We did add 14" of insulation to the attic, but we are trying to figure out how to do the walls efficiently.

As far as the electric bill goes, I would bet we don't spend more than 20 or 30 bucks on the house.  We don't use the lights much, and we usually only run the window AC units when we are working in the house or at night.  We do have an electric water heater, but it is wrapped and it is 90 gallons, so it has a very large heat reserve when you run the hot water.  Rewiring the farm really made a difference on electrical usage.  Some of the wiring was originally installed in the mid '20s for the Delco Light Plant generator/battery combo.  It was only rated to 32 volts, but they were running 115v down it!  No wonder the lights dimmed when you would turn anything on in the barn. 

Last edited by Orion (2006-07-25 9:39 am)

If it's built like my 1900 house, it has X-beam construction. Usually when they blown in insulation, they make a hole both at the top and bottom of the space between the studs. That's going to be a lot of holes! I've got asbestos shingles on the outside and that makes it even harder.

I'm thinking of just having sheet insulation and vinyl siding wrapped around the house instead. Just waiting until I can afford a home-improvement loan.

Orion wrote:

This one is simple stud wall construction, but it has so many odd angles on the upper story that it might be difficult.  The house is shaped like a huge plus sign, but all the rooms upstairs have at least two slanted walls due to the roof line.  Some will have to be insulated from the attic, some from the outside.  Plus, we have nice wood siding (its not cedar, maybe maple?) that we don't want to ruin (some is from the original house built c. 1850).  It is indeed lath and plaster, but there is no newspaper in the walls.  My current bedroom gets frost on the walls in winter during cold spells.  It has gotten down to 42 overnight in that room with the heat set to 68 degrees.  Brrrrrrrrrr!  I am almost wondering if we wouldn't be better just stripping off the lath and plaster and putting up drywall.  That would allow us to put in insulation as needed and to run air ducts for central heat/AC for the future.  I would probably rewire the house at that time, adding Ethernet, phone, and cable jacks in each room.  One can dream anyway.... 

One room at a time.

The "budget plan" is they take the amount your 12 most current bills would have been and average them for a more reasonable and more predictable bill. They typically vary a little from month to month but very little on the whole. You end up paying about the same over the course of a year but don't get significantly high or low spikes in your bill.

ScifiterX wrote:

The "budget plan" is they take the amount your 12 most current bills would have been and average them for a more reasonable and more predictable bill. They typically vary a little from month to month but very little on the whole. You end up paying about the same over the course of a year but don't get significantly high or low spikes in your bill.

Yeah, we're on a budget plan for heating oil and furnace maintenance.  We pay something like $90 a month year round.  If we overpay, we get the extra back with interest.  A lot of companies don't do the interest thing though, in which case it would probably be better to try to do one's budgeting on one's own if at all possible.

I asked for a budget plan from my local oil company and they wanted $200 a month!

No thanks. I'd rather put that money into my savings account and pay for my oil out of that. At least I'll get the interest.

Farmerkev wrote:

It makes a big difference where you live and how big your family is.
For instance Malkin is paying 7 cents a kwh, ours is over 13 cents. I'd basically be double even if we used the same amount. Add in kids and the extra laundry and dishes and it gets right up there.

Certainly price differences are some of it.  But that's why I asked to compare kWh used instead of dollars spent.  Also, I've spent most of my life in households of four or more people, and we've never used nearly as much electricity as some of the people in this thread seem to.

I'm often stunned at how much power some people seem to waste.  For instance, Aaron's dad will leave the television on even when he's leaving the house for a few hours.  Why?!  That's just plain stupid.  And simple things like forgetting to turn off the lights when leaving the room.

Home tours are a hobby of mine, and I've toured hundreds of houses.  One thing I'll never get over is how many people neglect taking simple steps that would improve the energy efficiency of their homes.  Yes, some things like replacing windows or appliances can get expensive, but adding a little weather stripping around the doors?   That doesn't take much money nor time, and combined with other simple improvements, it can add up to a substantial savings.

I'm not saying that everyone in this thread with high power bills is simply being wasteful.  Sometimes that's just the way the cookie crumbles.  I'm just saying that we all can benefit from taking the time to assess our electricity usage and look for ways to reduce our consumption.  I know I have plenty of room for improvement, too.

But it's a dry heat!