Islandsnowz

Btw, I found one of the paper bills, January's 2009 kwh usage was 3,142 that came out to be $333.90.

thunder04

iTrader: (1)

Wow. I used 412 Kwh last billing cycle (which made the electric part of my utility bill $50.14). You definitely used more than me! lol

Islandsnowz

Thats awesome man. lol. Sooo who wants to help convert my house into solar powered this summer?

Dr. Colorado

Nick, i had a similar issue when i moved into my home over 1 year ago. My electric bill was crazy high and i live by myself. I had my patient who is an electrician come over and check everything out and he said everything was fine. Then, I called the electric company and they sent a guy out to make sure the meter was working correctly, which it was. 2 weeks later, a different electric co. guy came out and placed a device attached to the meter that collected readings for 1 week straight. Lo and behold, i was still racking up mad kwh even though i was away snowboarding in new mexico lol. So, the electric co. dude came back and went through every switch, outlet, and device in my home and found out the fan within the split central air unit was running silently 24/7 unbeknownst to me, and probably the previous owner as well. The fan switch should have been on auto instead of on (different switch from a/c), and since it was the winter i was not using the a/c at all, the a/c unit was off since it obviously was not making noise, and i assumed the fan was off since there was no noise. The fan had been on since the previous owner vacated the home. Identifying that and correcting the problem cut my electric bill by 40%!

Oh, and get yourself a water heater timer btw

The Dougler

iTrader: (1)

I just checked my rental properties power bill, 884 KwH which cost about $94 for the month of december. Now to frame this for you the house is occupied by 5 college girls, so that means 5 computers, 3-4 tvs, washer and dryer running a lot, there's also 2 fridges and 2 deep freezers. it has a gas furnace and water heater though. if your burning through 3100KwH something is seriously wrong.

svtmike

Last summer during the hottest month of the year I burned through just shy of 2186 kwh keeping a 5400 sq ft house cool with air conditioning and a family of 4 living here. In December when it was nice and cold, we burned through 1821 kwh including running the Christmas lights.

All of my heat is gas: furnace, water heaters, dryer, and cooktop. We do have an electric oven though.

T Ho

Crikie! I'm at 750-900kwh for the winter months. 3300sq ft, gas heat (forced air), electric stove, electric dryer, family of four. TVs, PCs, home theater, yada, yada.

Please post up what next month's bill is. I'm curious as to how much the water heater made a difference. Did you get the Kill-a-Watt meter yet? Newegg is running a special...


BTW, you could not put enough solar panels on the roof to put a dent in that bill.

Islandsnowz

Lol the solar panels then.
Yeah i'm on edge to know what next months bill will be. Haven't gotten around to ordering the meter just yet.
Screw you guys and your fancy not over priced bills .

SiGGy

Our house is nearly 100% electric and we heat/cool 4000 sq/ft. We don't have power bills anywhere near his...

An old electric water heater could easily cause a huge electric bill actually. Especially one with a lot of mineral build up; it's possible the heating elements were on way longer than need be. Just like some old refrigerators are VERY expensive to run...

Our most expensive electric bill has been $240, we live in Kansas ... 100 degree summers and pretty cold winters...

litesout

A lot of people don't realize how much power those hot water heaters use. When they're in proper working order, they're about a quarter of your average bill. I'd be willing to put money on your old one being the culprit. Between the mineral build up on the heating coils and the obvious short in the thermostat, that thing was probably running 24/7. The crack in the bottom was most likely caused by the water being overheated. Did you notice if the water was hotter than normal in the weeks leading up to the spill?

Also, whoever mentioned the dehumidifer is a smart individual. You can negate a lot of water damage by getting one within the first day or so of the actual spill. The problem with the forced air the maintenance is using is that it just pushes the water to a different location, it doesn't actually do anything to collect it. But run a dehumidifier down there for a day and see how much water it collects.

And surfer rick, you've got a great electric company if they're willing to come in and do that for you. The one I work for doesn't offer that. And for those of you who doubt your old meters, I wouldn't. As time goes on they actually run slower rather than faster. A newer one is more accurate, but its going to cost you more (not much mind you, but a little bit) due to the newer magnets by the buss bar.

Islandsnowz

Ohh yeah with the old heater the water was ready to burn you as soon as you turn the hot knob on, if you wanted a decent shower you had to mix a lot of cold water to get it to a comfortable temperature which made showers run cold faster.
With the new heater, its not as hot or instant as the old but the showers are much longer. It has its ups and downs, like for the dishwasher I noticed that the dishes were not getting as clean as before because the water is not as hott and the steam action is gone, same goes for the washing machine. I should be able to the bill from last month now, i'll let you know if there were a difference.

Islandsnowz

Update: Oh btw they tore down the wall and found black mold forming from upstairs and green mold at the bottom, we believe the dishwasher was leaking from upstairs since its right under, I'll post pics tonight, looks nasty.

thunder04

iTrader: (1)

^ That's nasty. Time to move? lol

litesout

There should be a thermostat on the water heater so you can turn the heat up a little bit. It will impact your power bill, but you'll get hotter water. Most of them come set to 125 from the factory for safety reasons. And its more efficient that way. The fact that your water isn't as hot but you're getting longer showers tells me you had a bad heating coil. Was probably on non stop. That, along with the high bill, is a good indicator that was your issue. I hope you'll post back what effect replacing it had on your bill after the clean up is finished.

Sorry to hear about the mold. Can't say that I'm surprised though. After the leaks its kind of hard to avoid though.

BigLizard

pics?

BigLizard

Just checked my bill. My 1720 squarefoot townhome is brand spanking new from October 2008. My wife and I used 1536 KWH and 63 THRMs this month. :shakehead .

The water heater is gas powered, so is central air, and of course gas fire place (I hate that thing!). Makes me wonder if something is sucking more juice than it should.

thunder04

iTrader: (1)

^ If you're talking about air conditioning (cooling), that is not gas powered. A/C units use electricity (and they use a lot). The heat portion of your house's HVAC system probably burns natural gas to produce heat, but everything else uses electricity.

BigLizard

I don't have A/C at the moment. The hook up is there, just don't have the funds yet.

I'll have to purchase that item from newegg and see what's going on.

moeronn

^^ Then you don't have central air.

Central Air = whole house AC (vs. window or through-the-wall AC).

BigLizard

^^That makes no sense.

he heat/air gets pumped by one unit (located in the closet in the garage). When the unit kicks on, every room is receiving heat/air (whole house).

moeronn

Then you have central heat with a fan. Since you can't cool your whole house, then it's not truly central air.

Mr. Incredible

wow


sorry about that water heater... that sucks big time..

I inherited my fathers house when he passed, and his water heater was in the laundry room.. I moved it outside into the back yard (I live in Southern California so no freezing issues for me) because of that same type issue.. damn heater when belly up and flooded the laundry room and kitchen..


as for the power use.. I suspect you may be correct, the heater was probably working overtime..

I have an amusing story, but quite opposite of yours..

my Girlfriends father passed away in 2007, So she moved into his house since it was owned out right, and got out of her apartment..

her father was a bit of a miser, so no A/C, no fans, ceiling or otherwise.. and he also had a dog run along the side of the house with double fences, and the electrical meter was behind the house, behind the double fences.

he lived in that house from 1964 until he passed, at some point the Gas and Electric companies, had stopped reading his meters and just started "estimating" his usage based on the same month of the previous year.. because they couldn't get the the meters to read them.. Joe was 91 when he passed and had been retired since the early 80s and was very hard of hearing... probably never answered the door for them.

this ended up is a leveling of his bill, probably went of for 15/20 years.. Dead of summer $25 Electric bill, Dead of winter, $15 Gas Bill (gas heater in the house)...

When Rain (yes the GF's name is Rain) moved in she waited a few months before calling the Electric Company and Gas company and changing the name..

apparently a name change requires an actual viewing of the meter..

so.....

the first bill under her name... $18,000

basically the difference in kilowatt readings from the "last" bill to the actual reading..

the last bill was an estimate of an estimate going back some 20 years, and the "estimate" was WAY off...

needless to say, she complained, and they agreed that it was out of wack and replaced the meter so she could start freash... avg bill last summer was $95 (May - October) and about $65 during the winter..

thunder04

iTrader: (1)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_air

"Central air conditioning, commonly referred to as central air (U.S.) or air-con (UK), is an air conditioning system which uses ducts to distribute cooled and/or dehumidified air to more than one room, or uses pipes to distribute chilled water to heat exchangers in more than one room, and which is not plugged into a standard electrical outlet."

You have central heat.

BigLizard

Everybody (including the builders, the warranty people, ethe the HOA), calls it central air.

I'm thinking they call it that because air con can be hooked up.

I was just going off of what they said.

timmahh

Meh.. my PG&E bill is $425 this month. ($17 of that is gas; the rest is electric)

I hope it goes down.. I think the big jump was the drain/refill of the new hottub twice (had to run hours and hours to heat it each time), we also changed the pool pump from a peice of crap that didn't do jack sh!#!# to a 40gpm pump.. and we've run it excessively because the other pump was not able to clean the pool


To the OP... Umm.. Mebbe you should consider moving out of the place that has mold, leaky dishwashers, and crappy water heaters! :p When do you get your next electric bill?


I hope my electric bill goes down next month.. but with summer coming i'm sure we'll be in the $500 - $600 / month area... sucks!

- 2276 sq feet 2 story built in 2005; split zone system
- 2 desktops, 1 home server
- fridge in kitchen, beverage fridge in office, freezer in garage
- Spa
- Pond pump
- Pool pump
- Outside lighting [unacceptable to not have this people.]
- Cat genie (rawr!!!)

Islandsnowz

Lol wow, here goes an update....


Our carpet finally was replaced about 2 weeks ago (yes it took that long) because the was a change in management and they stopped all maintenance work for a few weeks. Since the new water heater has been installed, the power bill has only decreased by 10 to 20 dollars .

We got confirmation from the guy that works on the a/c units here that this is the one sucking all the juice. We also noticed filter wasn't dirty after 3+ months of use so we put a piece of paper where the filter was and it wasn't sucking the paper which shows there's not much circulation and if it was sucking more, it would push air out faster..., to make it worse, they re-cemented the sidewalks here about a month ago and cemented everyone a/c fan unit to the ground, including pipes . How safe is that?

One guy decided to go the cheap route and instead of replacing the old unit, he put more freon in the system, could literally see the pipe to the fan outside freeze over and change white.
Of course that didn't help because about a week later we turn the unit on and you hear a very loud buzzing and zapping noises, it will come and go and then last for like 30 seconds and shake the entire house, it is equal to the sound of a rice civic driving through your living room accelerating to 40mph. All on 1st gear.
I'm not sure what it was but i think it was the freon pipe either shaking or squirting it out and it wasn't safe to leave on. So they ordered a new unit and this weekend we are going without a/c until Monday, lucky we are having tornado weather currently and its cool and windy out .

We promised ourselves that our next move would be outta state instead of skipping to the other side of the city so without trying to kill our landlord we are toughing it out, also getting free rent because of all the problems the let happen ..

-sorry for the long post-
use your windows narrator and she will read it all for you LOL.

dallison

we have a 1500 sqft house and have everything plugged in at all times. We have 2 fridges , a computer and timers on a lot of lights. Our averagebill is around $140 or so depending on the season. he cheapest is around $90 which should be this month and the most expensive is 250 winter, 200 summer.