Utilitity Bills: Need advice please!

In addition to adding more insulation, look at replacing your windows with energy efficient ones....it's not cheap to do it, but it will quickly be paid back in electric bill savings.

Lower your heat to 60 degrees, and wear a layers. You can buy a kerosene heater and use it in the room you're in (close the doors so you're only heating that space).

Look at planting wind-breaks around the house... depending on your zone, certain evergreen bushes/trees can help keep the wind from blowing directly onto your house, making it more energy efficient.

If the house is a rental, you should consider moving.....

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That heat bill is killing you. Go turn down the thermostat, right now!

I know someone who is heating a similar size house with just space heaters this year, including heating the garage for their dogs. They keep it toasty and warm in the living room/kitchen - and their bill was "only" $300. So your heat must be going right back out of the house.

Our house is old and was un-insulated when we moved in. We added insulation on the outside walls (under vinyl siding) and replaced the windows with double glass. We also blew in cellulose insulation in the attic, over a foot of it. The attic insulation made a huge difference in the comfort level, just about as much as the windows, and for a fraction of the cost.

Turn the thermostat down to 65 or so, and button up the house. Plastic over the windows or hang insulated drapes, even a quilt or blanket. Close off rooms you don't use. Go around the outside with spray foam and caulk and seal it up, especially the north and west sides. If you own it, add insulation to the attic and see about blowing some into the walls. If you buy enough insulation, they let you use the machine to blow it for free. Unless it is newer, your hot water tank is probably limed up and not running efficiently. Check into replacing it. If you are on an electric coop, you can probably get a new energy efficient model for free or reduced cost.

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It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with the simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

We are in S. central MO. We get very clear antenna tv: cost - $0 US cellular hot spot or wireless: cost - $50. or cheaper depending on how much you need. Wear warmer clothes in the house and use throw blankets when you are sitting around watching tv, etc. Turn thermostate way down. Do you have a wood stove? Might be something to think about. Just some ideas.

For now if you can't afford new windows the plastic that is made for windows works pretty good to stop the drafts. As someone said sew up some little tubes to put in window seals and on the bottom of the doors.

I would switch to wood heat. Or even a Toyo would probably be cheaper than electric.

We live in a old 2000 sqft house heated with wood and our power bill is a bit over $100. We do use a lot of fans to move the heat around. We live out on a windy prairie.

This house used to require 2 heat sources to keep the the basement and 1st floor warm..... we now heat the basement, 1st AND 2nd floors comfy and a cheaply.

Mrs WHodunit.

Heat with wood on a woodstove that you can cook and heat water on. Skip the dryer and see if you well has any issues. I agree with closing off rooms,wearing warmer outfits, and dumping internet (if it is just fun and not school, work or saves money by limiting driving --order on line and skipping some or many shopping trips. By by cable-- if you need internet go with netflix or amazon prime (shop for NEEDED only items and get free shipping --save gas and time--only works it it is NEEDED-- peanutbutter, coffee ect.

I'll add:

12- Use the Hot Water, heated on the top of Wood Stove, to hand wash your dishes, so fire the dishwasher, and save more $$$

You have a lot of great advice here to save $$$ on your electric bill. Hope you heed the advice as that is a lot of $$$ being wasted...

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Christie Acres
www.SequimForLife.com
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One of THE BIGGEST energy savers, if you are not doing so, is turning down your hot water heater.

If your water is boiling hot, all day all night, you could potentially save up to 50% off your energy bill by turning it down, even 20-30% would be a big savings. I know someone who went around reducing energy costs for a living and he told me he couldn't count the number of people with outrageous bills but who absolutely loved their hot water, not knowing that was their biggest culprit!

It might not be yours, but it might help.

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Wise enough to know I'll never be wise enough to know it all

For an older house (1910 and older), I think your bills sound normal. The only thing I wonder about is your electric cost that far south. Have you thought about getting a natural gas furnace? Electric heat is costly.

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Moms don't look at things like normal people.
-----DD

That is why DH modified our Wood Stove to heat our water. We fired the Water Heater, don't need it all Winter...

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Christie Acres
www.SequimForLife.com
http://www.irealtyvirtualbrokers.com...lori-christie/
http://luxurywaterviewhomes.com/
SequimLiving@gmail.com

You might check with your local electric companies and farm organisations to see if any of them offer internet cheep.
Get some propane or natural gas heat!

NO! I've done a LOT of research on this. Taking shorter showers, and using less hot water WILL reduce a power bill as you suggest. However, the temperature of the water in a modern, PROPERLY INSULATED electric water heater is largely irrelevant. On average, a person might save $5 to $10 a YEAR unless there is a leak or drip in the hot water taps. With the old water heaters, there was some savings, as you claim.

The key is not the temp of the hot water, but the temp that you like to shower at. It makes no difference if your hot water is 100 degrees or 160. When you temper the water to 92 for your shower, you will use LESS of the 160 degree hot water to mix with your cold water and MORE of the 100 degree hot water. The conservation of energy laws will not be denied.

When most folks become energy cost conscious, they do a number of things at the same time to "save" energy. In doing so, they can ascribe savings to stuff that has no effect. Take five minute or shorter showers, turn household heat down. Those will save power usage.

You need to address your heat loss. Insulation if you can afford it if not get out the blankets, and I don't mean to wrap yourself in either! Cover every window with a blanket and close off any unused rooms. We lived in a very old house for awhile and we hung blankets in doorways of rooms without doors, tacked up everything we could find at the goodwill - blankets, sleeping bags............anything to reduce the amount of precious warm air escaping and cold air entering. Reduce the amount of rooms that you are living in during the colder months.
We also have a Eden Pure that we use in our new home. Our furnace never cycles when it is turned on - great little thing and it only raises our electric bill by about $5 per month!

We have a Verizon wireless 4G Mifi for our ranch for Internet. It costs $50.00 per month. It is smaller than a cell phone. I slip it into my IPad case and take it along when I go somewhere I believe I will be waiting for a while, or long car trips when Hubby drives. I love the convenience, and being able to surf the net while we are on the road, Or anywhere that gets Verizon cell service. That is cheaper than what you are paying for Internet. I think we can have up to 5 devices using it at once.

We got a $500 bill for electric last month because our tenant at our house in the burbs was heating the place with space heaters rather than using the gas forced air furnace that is built in. But with that one exception, you are paying more to heat your house than we are paying for electricity for our large house in the burbs with a Mother-in-law apartment, about 3200 square feet, AND the house at our ranch in the mountains, about 1200 square feet. Granted, the house in the burbs is in a moderate climate, and we almost never use the heater. The water heater is gas, and the stove snd oven are electric. The ranch on the other hand is at about 5,700 feet elevation,and gets real winters, with snow on the ground for months on end.

We have two refrigerators and a huge chest freezer running at the house in the burbs, and a refrigerator and upright freezer running at the ranch.

Something is very wrong when you are paying more for electricity for one house than we are paying for both of ours combined. Is it possible someone has tapped into your power somehow, or there is a short somewhere?

We have forested property and heat with a wood stove. Other than the blower for the stove, we don't pay to heat the ranch house. I do much of my cooking on there too, so I'm getting a lot of mileage out if that free heat. We have a propane stove for the kitchen. It can be lit with a match if the power is out. But I'm not using it much because the wood stove is there and already hot. I don't like pilot lights if I can avoid them. They use up too much gas for my tastes,especially when we are only there part time. Our water heater uses a pilot light. I only light it if we are going to shower, and then turn it off when we are done. I keep a couple of stock pots of water on the back of the wood stove so I've always got hot water when we need it.

Several years ago after we had the propane tank at the ranch filled in November, the propane guy asked what appliances we had that run on gas. I answered tht we had a propane range in the kitchen and the heater. He smiled and said he would need to come back and fill the 500 gallon tank in March. But being frugal, we didn't need to call him back for four years. And we still had half a tank. So there are plenty of things you can do to save money.

I made some nice Roman shades for our old single pane windows. The place really warmed up with those. They are getting old enough to replace soon, and the next ones will be even thicker and save more heat. We are replacing the windows with dual glazed ones as we can afford it. I winterized the place as best I could on very little money. I used weather stripping wherever I could. I went through several cans of expanding foam. Eventually we want to pull off the cedar shake siding and properly insulate, wrap the place with Tyvek and replace the cedar shakes with some Hardy cedar looking shakes.

I'm wondering if your electric company would do an energy audit for you to see why you use so much?

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I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam.

Popeye

We used to own a beautiful 1905 house, 300+ in natural gas a month in the wlnter.

Many of the above suggestions are excellent but take some investment. Here's the cheap way to start. If you haven't already, get "grey worm" at the hardware store and put it in all the window cracks. Then put up the window plastic sheeting. The new stuff is excellent, you can hardly see it if you shrink it with a hairdryer. It's like having a storm window. Put weather stripping on all the doors, cover external doors you don't use with plastic. Feel your electrical outlets, if cold air is coming out, get foam insulators at the hardware store.

Good luck!

Not only is turning down the water heater not saving energy, it also significantly increases the risk of Legionnaires Disease, a leading cause of Pneumonia. This is much more common than most people know. The Legionella bacteria can thrive in cooler water heaters, then is aspirated in the shower.

Also, turning down the water heater will save ZERO energy in the winter in her electric house. Any heat lost from the tank is lost into the heated space, so not lost at all. The water heater is also 100% efficient.

Laugh, but get a new TV. The old tube types use so much money. Find a high efficiency TV. Read the energy usage label. My 40 inch uses $8 a year @ 5 hrs a day and $. 11 a kilowatt. Friend's daughter got a 32 that was $15 a year. Newer models are not energy star always, so use it as a guide.

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Please excuse my typo errors,

Greg

To be more specific, the person I knew worked largely in older homes that needed serious updating with insulation and the like. If he gave nothing but an estimate but advised turning down the water heater, many times if he came back to insulate at a later date, the homeowner would thank him for saving them up to a few hundred bucks a month. They honestly didn't know.

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Wise enough to know I'll never be wise enough to know it all

The newest ones now take less, But the HDTV's of just a few years ago don't.
My old 31 Tube TV used 90 Watts.
My now 3 year old 40 inch LCD HDTV takes 210 Watts~!!!!! That is WAY more then the older tube type.
Now the equivalent LCD HDTV is around 175 watts for a 40 inch.
But the LED HDTV's are much lower in power consumption at around 120 IF you are not in the energy saving mode~!
So you really have to shop around to get HDTV's that take less power then then older Tube types.
And this energy Star Rating is a JOKE in Plain Block Letters~!
The ONLY and I mean ONLY way these new TV's get that rating is when they are OFF they are OFF~!!!!! Which means they take LESS then One Watt when the set is OFF. But when these new sets are on Watch Out~!

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We reduced our electric bill by $52.00 a month by not using the electric clothes dryer. We are certain the amount is $50.00 per month because twice now we had to use the dryer and both months the bill went up by $51.00 and then $52.00. We were sick during the holidaze and used the dryer and another time it rained a lot and we used it.

Save money and hang clothes up inside or outside on dry days.

We once saved heat by putting plastic all around a front porch. We put four layers of cardboard on the floor. It was just cardboard boxes from an appliance store. We just opened the boxes, laid the cardboard all over the porch and did four layers of it. Then, we hung plain ole plastic on all sides. This not only kept the wind out but made a "solar" porch which helped collect heat.

We also took old blankets and put them on the floor in the living room. We would sit at night watching TV and although we all had blankets on us, our feet would get cold. When we took the old blankets and doubled them on the floor, it kept us warmer.

I would also suggest turning off the TV to save money. We went without TV for 2.8 yrs. and it was not bad once we got used to it. We also shut off our internet. We went to the local public library for internet and they also loaned out movies. We enjoyed watching lots of old movies plus watched TV series we had not seen before. We were able to get a few channels using those bunny ear things.

Good luck. It is a challenge to cut bills but once you do, relief will follow. Also, if you get everyone in the house on board to help that will really mean success. Show everyone the electric bills and ask them to participate to get the bill down.

Good luck!

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