Power Costs

I'm so old school I'm still irritated by "Soft White" incandescents. 99% of the bulbs in my house are clear glass incandescent.

Joful said:

Just repeating what I've heard repeating here many times, not speaking from personal experience, but the oft-repeated advice is to wait for your CFL's to burn out and then replace them with LED's. The cost analysis I've seen hasn't supported swapping out functional CFL's for LED's, due to the small incremental change in operating cost.

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That's kind of what I was thinking. When I bought my house, 60% of the fixtures already had cfl's, and the rest were empty. Our power company gives you a "free" box of cfl's when you move in, and since I have 2 separate circuits for the house and shed, I got 2 boxes and decided to go 100% cfl at the house. Now their starting to burn out, and I've just been picked up more cfl's, mostly because it's hard to spend $12 on a single LED. But I was an early adapter back when LED flashlights were first coming out, and those bulbs lasted pretty much forever. I might have to start swapping bulbs that the wife tends to leave on the most as they burn out.

Joful said:

I'm so old school I'm still irritated by "Soft White" incandescents. 99% of the bulbs in my house are clear glass incandescent.

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Shouldnt you be reading by candles and Whale oil lamps?

$0.12 kWh
$0.56 CCF natural gas

Peak at around 550 CCF per month of natural gas in the winter and 3300 kWh electricity in the summer. Natural gas is so cheap anymore I stopped burning wood for now since 7-8+ cords per year is very difficult to process and store on a smaller city lot.

Yearly:
Electrical $3200
Gas $2000

jharkin said:

Shouldnt you be reading by candles and Whale oil lamps?

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Well, if we're going to be proper, my house pre-dates the commercial success of oil lamps in mid-Atlantic America, so we'd be reading solely by candle. Yes, we sometimes do that, but usually only when the power goes out.

Joful said:

Well, if we're going to be proper, my house pre-dates the commercial success of oil lamps in mid-Atlantic America, so we'd be reading solely by candle. Yes, we sometimes do that, but usually only when the power goes out.

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What years did whale oil lamps come out acutally? I might be candle era as well

brian89gp said:

Peak at around 550 CCF per month of natural gas in the winter and 3300 kWh electricity in the summer.

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1 CCF = 1 therm (100kBTU) correct?

May I ask, how big is your house? 500+ therms a month is a tremendous amount of gas, even for old drafty cnostruction. You must have a pretty big gas meter....

jharkin said:

1 CCF = 1 therm (100kBTU) correct?
May I ask, how big is your house? 500+ therms a month is a tremendous amount of gas, even for old drafty cnostruction. You must have a pretty big gas meter....

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Yep. The biggest one the gas company has for residential use. Have two 100k 80% furnaces that run 24/7 when it gets down in the single digits. 2400sq/ft finished space, 1200sq/ft basement, and all exterior walls are solid masonry (plaster on brick interior) with zero insulation. Virtually zero drafts, just a large house with heat sinks for walls.

jharkin said:

What years did whale oil lamps come out acutally? I might be candle era as well

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I know whale oil lamps were being used well before the American Revolution, but I believe the whale oil was not often available to the countryside north and west of Philadelphia. It was a European and New England commodity.

Around here, it was candles, until the kerosene lamps became popular in the generation following the American Revolution.

Everyone may hate me for saying this but... $0.068/kWh, $250 for a cord of wood.

3 cords per year: $750
Electricity (April 2013-April 2014): $1172.
Total: $1972.

That is total energy costs for a house that is 1300 sq ft (the basement is heated as well, that's where my stove is located). Not to mention my wife / 2 kids are home all day long (so we heat it 24/7...I tend to turn down the heat if nobody is in the house slightly) and the price includes hot water.

Andrew

Swedishchef said:

Everyone may hate me for saying this but... $0.068/kWh, $250 for a cord of wood.

3 cords per year: $750
Electricity (April 2013-April 2014): $1172.
Total: $1972.

That is total energy costs for a house that is 1300 sq ft and has my wife and 2 kids in it all day long (so we heat it 24/7...I tend to turn down the heat if nobody is in the house slightly) and includes hot water.

Andrew

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Hate is a strong word.... ;-)

About $130 - $150 per 1/4 for electricity.

No idea on average GAS as we have a Condensor. Last month we used $5 in gas.

Wood is ALL gathered by me. Something like $150 - $250 in Petrol. That's for around 7-8 cord.

yrock87 said:

Hate is a strong word.... ;-)

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Dislike

Swedishchef said:

Dislike

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envy? $2011.00 oil, $1155.00 electric, $775.00 wood and canawick brick.$4000.00 in round figure. so take your stinkin hydro and enjoy it(sarc). only 3 people in 4000 sq ft. nothing but envy in this corner of the room.

I can post some numbers that would make you feel better, if you like, Doug.

Joful said:

I can post some numbers that would make you feel better, if you like, Doug.

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fellowship of the les miz I guess. isn't that what the music says?

I am fortunate..too bad I don't appreciate it. once I move I'll regret not appreciating it

Considering my entire house could fit in some of your living rooms, these numbers don't seem outrageous.....

Finally had to join in the fun...

We spent 3 years fixing and insulating to get down to:
4 tons pellets ( $975 as bought them in April)
475 galls of oil @ 3.45 ($1640) Used to be 1750 galls plus..
3 chords of wood (sorta free if I forget about the depreciation of splitter, tractor, chainsaw etc)
$105 per month electricity ( about constant all year around), say $1260

We are 4000 sq ft of early 1800s Federal.

4 years ago we used 2000+ galls of oil so the above figures represent progress.

Last year:

6 cords of wood = free, if I ignore the cost of gas and equipment
1100 gal. oil = $3650
150 gal. propane = $300
20,000 kWh electric = $3350

Believe it or not, we had done a lot to tighten up the house prior to last winter... the numbers used to be worse, per HDD. The last owner of this house owned an oil company, so energy conservation was not a factor in their renovations.

Joful said:

Last year:

6 cords of wood = free, if I ignore the cost of gas and equipment
1100 gal. oil = $3650
150 gal. propane = $300
20,000 kWh electric = $3350

Believe it or not, we had done a lot to tighten up the house prior to last winter... the numbers used to be worse, per HDD. The last owner of this house owned an oil company, so energy conservation was not a factor in their renovations.

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wow? what happens when you cut the electric to norm? my guess is that you become a thermal death stat. big ole houses great but at a cost, eh. no envy in this corner anymore!

I dont want to speak for Joful, but I think the size of his place and hte stone construction are bigger factors in his numbers than just the age. If you normalized it for square footage he probably is doing fairly good considering the age of house.

In fact if we calculate BTU/HDD/ft2 my place probably ranks right up there with Joful. I was consuming around 15 BTU/HDD/ft2 gross (about 12 on a net basis after stack losses) when I moved in... got that down to around 11 gross/9 net with insulation upgrades, and that is likely as good as its ever gonna get here.

Modern code and super efficient heating gets under 5 I believe??....

Good point, Jeremy! I could do the same calculation, but the BTU's used would be a bit of a guess, as I use far more BTU's when heating with wood versus heating with oil and propane. I attribute this to the fact that when heating with oil, the house is allowed to go cold overnight and during the work day. When heating with wood, I need to keep a fire going all night and all day, so it's warm when I wake up / get home. If we let our house go cold, the two stoves don't have the horsepower to bring temps back up.

I'm also not sure how many sq.ft. I'm really heating, as there is a 1800 sq.ft. discrepancy between my realtor, appraiser, and tax man. My own numbers put us around 6660 sq.ft., soon to be 7860 sq.ft. with the addition we're currently planning.

Joful said:

I'm also not sure how many sq.ft. I'm really heating, as there is a 1800 sq.ft. discrepancy between my realtor, appraiser, and tax man. My own numbers put us around 6660 sq.ft., soon to be 7860 sq.ft. with the addition we're currently planning.

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See by that logic maybe I'm even more wasteful. Multiplying my 3k bills by the difference in our square footage would come up with something like $12-14k.


Right now I can only dream of haivng tje kind of space you guys have... someday....