Electrical costs - Are you doing anything different?

[Jim]

OK - so I am here to make ALL of you feel a bit better.

We keep our house at 78 degrees, have lots of insulation, new air conditioner unit about 2 years ago (more efficient), all new duct work, etc

And last month, our electric bill was $925. Yep, you read that correctly. I said $925.



We are NO LONGER with TXU. We have changed companies.

 

[joelq]

@kuyatwo wrote:

Pampee - great idea on the whirly birds, but make sure you've got enough soffit vents under the eves of your roof. Most houses are built with far too few of them, and this is how cool air enters your attic. This way you'll have good flow in and out of your attic.

 

[Slovak]

@theturk wrote:

You've either got a big house, or three generations living together. :shock:

What do you use in the house? I can't imagine the electric bill to be the size of many people's mortgage payment!

Peter...

 

[Slovak]

@kuyatwo wrote:

My garage attic space and the one above the house are the same space without any barrier between. I put one of the light diffuser egg crates in the opening instead of the regular wood trap door design. It helps to pull the hot air from the garage up through the attic and out. There's a constant draft when I stand below the opening in the garage.

Peter...

 

[melev]

@theturk wrote:

Two things to check:

Has your dryer been running too long? Perhaps the vent tubing has been crushed because the dryer is too close to the wall. The hot moist air can't get out and thus it runs longer and costs a bunch.

Has your water heater been checked out? Mine was leaking for about a day or two, so I turned off the breaker until I could get it resolved. I turned off the wrong one, and it was on non-stop for 24 hours. My bill was easily $100 more than it should have been from that 1.5 days of 220v going to it. :roll:

Did you verify the meter reading was right? How many KWH did they say that you were using? At what rate? Any chance they were under-charging you for months (estimating) and finally hit you with the real deal? Just want to know so it doesn't happen to me!

I've been watching the meter for the past 24 hours to find out what I'm using on average. Last month, I used 99.8 KWH per day. Over the past 24 hours (now that I have the new A/C system), I used 86 KWH. I'm going to keep tracking this for now just to see what my efforts do.

As an aside, from April to May, I used 61.9 KWH per day.

 

[Jim]

OK - I dont have a small house (and it is two story). NO, I dont have but three of us living here.

I DO have a pool - which probably add $100 per month.

AND, I WAS using TXU. Last summer they talked my wife into a flexible rate plan. Worked well until last month. Cost went to $.19.

Now, we are going with Reliant - just over $.12 -- that should bring it down a bit.

Dryer doesnt run much (only three of us) - I cleaned the vents about 8 months ago and it is working great now.

Both Hot water heater are located inside the house in a closet. Seldom do they actually run.

I dont want to know how much my tank costs me. Especially since I now have to add a chiller.

 

[Wes]

@kuyatwo wrote:

are you doing the electrical ones? my dad added those and said he could tell a difference in the bill

 

[Guest]

i am not sure which ones they are using but will ask....I am having my roof replaced for hail damage and they are going to add three of them to my already three square vents i have already

 

[DaveJ]

@Wes wrote:

are you doing the electrical ones? my dad added those and said he could tell a difference in the bill"]

Me too.. I got the solar powered ones though.

 

[hawgman_98]

Well... some of you made me feel not so bad, others made me feel like crap.

2500 sq ft single story house. Built in December 2001.

800w of MH lighting over the tank, 1/3 hp chiller, dart pump on the closed loop, lil giant return pump, couple of power heads, skimmer, bla bla bla. So yea, it sucks some power.

My electric bills have always been high in this house. Not that it has ever surprised me much. Two refridgerators (gotta have a beer fridge in the garage! ), hot tub, two AC units, four computers that run constantly plus two work computers that run sometimes, all the other normal stuff that people have.

We have electronic thermostats. 79 in the daytime when no one is home, 78 in the evenings, and the unit that controls the AC for the bedrooms goes to 77 during sleep hours.

Last month my bill was 320. This month it was 640. According to the bill my useage was 41xx kwh used this month. Last month was 26xx kwh used. Did it get hot enough to increase the useage 15xx kwh? I have no idea because I have been in Philadelphia all month. All I know is that according to the bill, Gexa raised my rate 3 cents from 11.89 to 14.89 and didn't bother to say squat about it.

Right now I don't know exactly what I am going to do. I do know that I ain't looking forward to what will probably be $800+ for August and September!

For the time being I have cut back on lighting cycles. Lights come on an hour later, go off an hour and a half earlier. Hoping that 75 hours a month less lighting will make some sort of difference but honestly not expecting miracles.

I have discussed with the wife either converting it to a FOWLR tank that doesn't demand all the lighting and pumps, or getting rid of it all together.
Never actually estimated how much it costs me a month but it wouldn't surprise me if it was $150+

Going to look in to radiant barrier. But haven't really talked myself into it yet. You see one company that says you will save up to 30%, another company saying that any company that claims anything over a realistic 5-10% is full of it. Also looking at the possibility of replacing the AC units. Again, how long until I see a return on my money spent. I realize technological lifespan is short, but as stated earlier, these units are only 7 years old. Not sure exactly how much difference it is going to make for the $5k+ it is going to cost to replace them. Any forum of alternate energy is out of the question because of the ^#%@$#^$*!! HOA.

The best scenario I can come up with at the moment is... we're screwed.

 

[ChuckLawson]

Has anyone installed Solatubes?

I've been thinking about adding a 5 - 6 foot open-topped tank to my office (which is on the south side of the house), and use 2 or 3 14" Solatubes for the primary lighting, maybe with a bit of actinic T5 for supplementation and evening lighting.

I haven't actually priced them, but going by what little I can find online, it sounds like the costs per tube are about equivalent to buying a 250 watt MH and running it for a year, so after a year or so, they'd be essentially free.

Most of my tanks run a noon-midnight lighting schedule, since I tend to only be around them in the evening, but in the office I'm pretty much there when the sun's up anyway, so that would work out.

- Chuck

 

[Carabelli]

my parents have 2 of them in their house and love them - they work great for inside rooms where you want some daylight but don't want to waste a light ... we didn't use them on our new house, but, i think if we plan on staying here and renovate in 7-10 yrs, we will add some to the general house.

i don't know how well they work for lighting a tank though.

i still would love to hear from cheryl on the topic of water on the roof

 

[ss95003]

I have a radiant barrier installed done last summer. I run 3 250w MH 1 T5 Light set up 2 darts, and 1 marlin. keep the house at 77 degrees, and last bill i recieved was $160.

 

[Rick]

I already had the first $700 electric bill. The problem this year is the heat has hit us earlier. I used 5688 kwh up from 4884 kwh same time last year. The major problem with electricity around here is we have mostly natural gas power plants. The rising costs of natural gas, keeps the electricity going up. I get power from the Grayson-Collin Electric Co-op. They show on the bill the power cost recovery factor. Right now it is 5 times what it was a few years ago. I do have solar screens, and the ac units are less than 5 years old.
But the pool runs 7 hours a day, two refrigerators, a freezer, a 220 gallon fish tank with 1480 watts of light, a chiller, a small pool refrigerator, it all adds up. Plus two high school boys home all day in the summer.

 

[Rick]

@ss95003 wrote:

How much was the radiant barrier?

 

[TRITON1]

I have a hard time believing that people are attributing their high energy bills to their fish tank to the point of suggesting that getting rid of it would signifigantly lower their energy bill. Even with 2000 Watts of light powering a tank 10 hours a day at a rate of .12/kw adds up to $72. Surely not enough to make an energy bill in the 4 and 5 hundreds. It would probaly be best to compare your bill to the spring/fall months when no AC and heat are used (and a tank becomes a larger contributer)

It would also be interesting if people actually calculated the cost of running their tank exactly (more or less) to get a more realistic idea of how it factors in to their total bill. (Maybe a topic for a new thread whoever gets done first)

I imagine people with really high bills have poor insulation, old AC, no shade on their house, old appliances that suck energy, havent changed their AC filters in a while or something of that nature. Home improvement problems for sure. The other trend I see is keeping the AC on really low. Your probaly just used to the lower temperature such that turning the thermostat up feels "hot." I bet if you sweated it out a week or two your body would adjust to the new normal and you can start complaining about your back hurting because your wallet got bigger.

 

[Jim]

Triton - most of us are not saying we are getting rid of our reef tanks. Rick hit the nail on the head - it is due to high natural gas prices which cause a variable electric rate. The disturbing part is when you compare last month to this month or you compare what we paid last June to this June (and find that the KWs have changed little) but the cost of electricity have doubled.

You ASSUME that we all dont take care of our homes. You are correct that most of us dont change our major appliances every couple years -- again, the point is what was it last year? or last month? when those appliances were operational.

Many of the things that many of us feel are important--air condition, swimming pools, clothes dryers, ovens, aquariums, etc -- are energy hogs. The point of discussion is whether there are alternatives to lower the bill. Like what is the least number of MH lighting are really needed?

 

[Wes]

@TRITON1 wrote:

this has a big thing to do with it. I moved last july and this is really the first full start to a summer i have been in my new house and i have a cheaper bill this june in a house almost twice as big as i did last june in my smaller home that is 10 years old. updated items throughout help and could really be recovered easily.

a radiant barrier has alot to do with it too as it keeps the attic ALOT cooler. last time verizon was out to add a tv line (couple weeks back) the guy went in the attic and said he was amazed the difference. he laughed asking if i had anything else he could do for me cause he didnt want to go work in all the other attics that were ridiculously hot. now, the house does have a better tier ac unit, and better windows and insulation, but when the attic is not hot it really helps the house not be hot.

the thing with cheryl i would imagine to be like a sprinkler system for the roof. thats what ive seen in the past anyways, a set of heads that spray the roof once or twice an hour to keep it from being so hot and letting the heat radiate inside.

 

[ss95003]

@Rick wrote:

How much was the radiant barrier?"]


Contact DJWURM on the board he will give you a free est. My house is 1 story just over 2000sq and i paid just under 2k installed. Of course it really depends on how much roof space you have to cover. I have noticed a change in my usage since it was installed. I have had it just over a year now. even with the hotter summer i have used less ele. last billign cycle then the same billing cycle last year.

You can go into the attic at 3:00 in the afternoon and it's not much hotter in there then it is outside.

 

[Rick]

I am really thinking about getting the radiant barrier installed. I think it would make a big difference in this house. The roof is very high and there in no shade on the roof at any point in the day. Considering the roof space I think I would pay probably 50% more to have it installed. But with ACs all less than 5 years old. There are three units. I raise the temperature in the master bedroom area of the house during the day and shut all the doors. The back has solar screens. I know the tank is a small part of the cost. But I bet overall it is $100 a month. But overall it is the cost of electricity in Texas. We used to have about average rate costs compared to the rest of the country. We now have the second highest rates next to California. Thanks to deregulation and the cost of natural gas going up.