My budget is getting tight. Just got the biggest hydro bill I've ever had - $340.00 and we do all we can to use hydro during the off peak period.
( 5 bedroom/3 bath house) No my husband won't move. :)
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My budget is getting tight. Just got the biggest hydro bill I've ever had - $340.00 and we do all we can to use hydro during the off peak period.
( 5 bedroom/3 bath house) No my husband won't move. :)
Get a wind turbine. I hear they are the way of the future.
Got mine a couple weeks ago.
$400.
Bad as that sounds it beat the $625 for Dec/Jan and $650 for Mar/Apr. Small mercy for those on fixed incomes or around the means we haven't really needed to fire up the AC this summer I suppose.
Feel for you Sharon.
The things many don't want to see or admit, (belt tightening by the many) especially those that aren't privileged or in the Golden TA.
Those are some BIG bills....
We have a 2K Sq ft house, me the wife and twin 7 year old girls. Our monthly in the winter is $100-$125 and summer is $60-$90.
What the heck are you guys doing to get such high bills?
My thoughts too. 1400 sq ft bungalow, electric water heater, no AC. About 130/month - all year.Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffBondar
I recommend you call Hydro and get your meter checked out.
All I can think of is : new washer ( suppose to be energy efficient) new dishwasher ( used to do it by hand), more gardening = more water, dehumidifier in the basement, fans.
Big killer is AC, this assumes gas heat and water tank. My winter hydro bills are small compared to summer months.
Seems high Sharon , get the meter checked out for sure. Unless you are running a grow op then stay quiet and dont draw attention to yourself. Lol.
Convert as much lighting as possible to LED. Union Gas has incentives to convert to gas appliances (water heater, furnace dryer, etc)as well as home improvements(2500$) I believe. Leave the room, turn it off. T.O.U. rates help better overall home efficiency can't be beat. 1800 sq' home, average 137$/month year round.
ROFLMBo :) No that's my neighbor , not me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hunter John
(When his father was on holidays last week, the kid sold his father's car. Police looking for the kid now.)
I will get my meter checked. Thanks.
If I ever had a bill that high id be on the phone raising hell within minutes.
What on earth are you doing to get such a big bill? Ive got a 1600 sq ft home. My bill is about $120 in the summer and $130 in the winter (furnace). Electric water heater
Even last year when i had my flood and iwas runming two dehumidifiers and multiple shop vacs for the better part of a month my bill was only about $300
I posted what I do. :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sharon
Have you ever had an energy audit done? It seems that you're losing energy from various sources at an alarming rate. Something sure isn't right.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sharon
Ours is $300... $90 is fixed to repay from a while ago.. when we we went months with no $$$$... so we have about 210 a month.. gas furnace.. Electric water.. well.. (pump)..
Well don't know what you're doing, 1k sqft upstairs and 1k sqft basement, this bill was $56, last month $60 something. Gas water heater, furnace, BBQ, dryer and garage heater. Counter top stove is induction.
I'm a bit lost on the high efficiency clothes washers. I bought one and it'll be the last one I use. It's idea of efficiency seems to deal with water use, not electricity, which is a bit puzzling for North America.
We did use that provincial grant deal to insulate etc. etc and get the rebate.Quote:
Originally Posted by trimmer21
I have the best high effinciency clothes washer available. My wife!
Jeff, wait until you have teen girls, then you will understand why hydro can become 200+/month
Sharon - I think your hydro bill is probably accurate to the amount you are using. We all know hydro costs have had excessive increases. Especially in peak times. I have had bills @ $300 a month and now they are about $90 a month. I'm single and not a big hydro user if I pay attention. Not using my air conditioning. How many fridges do you have? Freezers? Air conditioning? Dehumidifier? Pool? Hot tub? Its hard to keep hydro costs down.
Thanks. I'll get the meter checked. It won't do any harm.
You guys are making me feel good, single, small house no dishwasher, no dryer, all lighting LED. $60.00/month.
Sharon, not sure how many fridges and freezers you have but anything with a motor or compressor will cost you money to run, another tip is to put a power bar on your computer and tv and shut the power bar off every night. Sharon, not sure if you keep past years bills but the only thing you can control on your hydro bill is Kwh used per day, Somewhere on your hydro bill is should show this, check your previous years bills with your present day bills and see if they have gone up or down, obviously you want them to go down. think I have mentioned this before but at our small 2 bedroom house the only lights that aren't LED or CPL bulbs is our bathroom, and of course those lights aren't on very much. you somehow have to get your KWH used per day down and that effects the rest of the garbage on your hydro bill. Hope this has helped.
We got a 2400 sq ft home. My wife, son and myself and we are home for the summer and our bills usually never top $120 a month mark.... is your water bill on the same bill as your hydro? Ours was up until a few years ago now they are separate....
$340 for a month of hydro, is way too much, something is wrong with the service, like the others have said, call hydro and get your meter checked.
You can check your bills on line up to two years back if I'm not mistaken. We keep the paper bills for 2 years and checking them, we're within 1-2kwh of daily use per month. Only during last winter did it go up a bit, the furnace was running a tad more.Quote:
Originally Posted by BIG MAC
It can be useful to check the online tools if you're with HydroOne. My mother in law had a big fight with Hydro as she was very picky about only using hydro during off-peak hours, but the bills kept racking up. Multiple calls to say something was wrong with the meter, and multiple answers of "These new meters can't be wrong".
The final straw was a "planned outage"... she knew power would be off for a set time; 11am to 4pm type deal. 10:59am the power went out, 4:02pm the power went back on... essentially bang on the time advertised. Wait a day, hop on the website, and wouldn't you know it, they were reportedly using hydro at 1pm. That 5hr window of outage was reported at the wrong time.
She got on the phone with HydroOne and had to fight with them to make them understand what was happening... they finally replaced/recalibrated the meter to match the correct time (an error they claimed couldn't possibly happen and that they also claimed they had checked). Reimbursed her like $50 for the incorrectly billed time.
Imagine always waiting until 7:30pm to do your laundry/dishes/etc... and being dinged for the high-demand usage rates because your meter was wrong!
I had an outage at my place a few weeks back... first thing I did was hop online and check that it was reported accurately for time!
Call your local Library and ask if they have a kill-a-watt meter for loan. Our libraries up here in Sudbury have one you can borrow. Plug in appliances or power strips, track the hydro used for as long as it's plugged in. I paid hydro in an apartment where the landlord supplied the fridge... dang thing never shut off... calculated usage with that meter and figured I'd pay off a new fridge in 2 years with the reduced hydro consumption.
Chest freezers are generally VERY efficient; my freezer is from the late '70s or early 80's... it would take 15+ years to pay off a newer freezer based on their advertised hydro consumption rates. As long as your freezer isn't running constantly, don't worry about it. Standup freezers are worse, since you lose all that cool air when you open the door.
Investigate that kill-a-watt meter. http://www.amazon.ca/P3-Internationa.../dp/B000RGF29Q
The local library loans out hydro use meters. You simply plug them into the outlet, then you plug the appliance into the meter. Borrow a couple of these, and they will help you determine how much electricity some of your appliances are using.
Imagine how nice it will be to deal with Hydro when they have no oversight from the Ombudsman? Not that Hydro is important. WE all have woodlots we could log for firewood right? That Witch will live on a gold plated pension and couldn't give a rat's rear what happens to rate payers.
Maybe the kid is tapping into your hydro for there grow op.......just saying lolQuote:
Originally Posted by Sharon
I think before to long you'll see people running their houses on Generators for a lot of time and only using hydro when they have to,
the extra charges on your hydro bill are getting away out of hand.
check out a generator and hook it up to natural gas and start running it 3 or 4 hours a day or more.
update: Talked to London Hydro. Higher bill is due to increased water use. Still hard to explain though he said as I don't have a pool or hot tub. Was very helpful in telling me what to do : check toilets, hoses etc. as they might be leaking. Investigation to continue. :)
edited for grammar
You can do that if you like,but,rest well assured that if you turn off your hydro and go completely off grid and still live in a town or city and buy from a local utility,you will still get a bill for everything except your actual usage. For those who have their water bills and hydro bills combined by a public utilitycompany,you're really getting hosed because they apply a retail profit margin into the prices the same as any other supplier of goods and services.Quote:
Originally Posted by BIG MAC
I don't know how the system in London works but here in clarington my water use is almost irrelevant. In the winter the hose gets shut off so all water usage is indoors. In the spring I constantly running water and I also fill the pool. In the summer I'm watering the grass, pressure washing and washing the trucks more often. I use a lot of water when the temp is higher then 10 degrees. My water bill in during the winter months compared to the summer months is within 10%. It would appear my usage is irrelevant because my water bill is always in the same range.... I don't feel bad about using water....Quote:
Originally Posted by Sharon
You only pay hydro for water use if you heat or pump it....
Our tenant had his daughter and baby visit for a week last spring, stayed two months. We monitor our usage very close and she cost us $200/month just by washing and drying clothes, showering etc during peak hours...... You could actually see in the hourly use when she went to visit other relatives overnight, and when she came home and put the laundry in the dryer. (We can see the dryer vent outlet to confirm)
I stuck a timer on our water heater so it does not run during peak hours and it makes a difference, our freezers and fridges are a different matter.....
I know a gent who's rigged up 2x 250w solar panels and DC pump to move all his home's water. He also had hydro telling him that his increased charges were coming from water consumption. A couple weeks of tracking the situation he was able to prove they were full of crap. They adjusted his bills and then another year later his bills spiked again. When he called that time they told him his on-peak use had doubled. He and his wife are both gone from the house from 7am-6:30pm. Their kids are grown and gone. All their kitchen appliances, home theatre systems & computers are on powerbars with timer shutoffs...So how could their on-peak spike?
Hydro refused to help him out so he had an electrician perform a very detailed audit and found hydro was overcharging him by an average of 11kwh per day.
On the non-hydro fault side... Our old oven was on the fritz last winter...220v can REALLY screw up your bills when one of those appliances is turning itself on overnight, and currents are pumping thru the element control knobs to shock ppl.
How else do you suppose Witch Wynne is to get more money out of us ? Increase hydro rates and then sneak in over charges hoping know one will notice. Happens all the time and you wonder what the $ extra profit comes to at year end ? Any accountant could see that when a forecast for the year is done and it has exceeded all expectations. What a scam !
i heat with hydro and no a/c we try to use off peak for dishwasher and cloths washer and dryer, bill is 120 in summer and around 300 in winter
Our bill is pretty grosse but we have two homes, five freezers, three fridges, two water pumps, numerous lights on motion detectors, two chicken coops with lights and heated water dishes, a tractor block,battery and rad heater. It all adds up without even counting all the green diode night lights and three UPS systems....
We pay about 19 cents per kWh, which is low for Ontario but high for North America