Gas bill and usage - Southern Walk

My wife and recently moved into Southern Walk. We purchased a Spruce. Coming from a smaller home I am trying to get a guage on avergae gas usage and bills. My bill was about $350 for the month of December and I chalked it up as using the fireplace too much and a lot of holiday cooking. My January bill shot up to $470. The home is 3,000 square feet of living space with no basement. I have two furnaces I have been running at about 72 degrees and rarely use my gas fireplace. I would like to get an idea of what others pay on average. Thank you in advance for the help.

 

Sounds about right to me. We have a Birchwood (also a Courtyard home) w/about 4000 square feet (including a finished basement). We rarely use the fireplace, and have programmable thermostats on both of our furnaces that keep the temperature in both zones at 68 on weekends, 68 on weekdays from about 5AM-7AM and 5PM-10PM, and 62 all other times. Our gas bill for January was $301. Last winter, before we installed the programmable thermostats, our gas bills were $400+ in Jan-Feb.

So, $470 seems about right for you, especially considering that you keep your thermostat at 72 degrees (which seems pretty warm to me).

If you want to spread out the high winter gas costs, you should be able to call Washington Gas and get on their "budget plan." This will spread your estimated gas costs over the course of the year. We did this last year.

 

Agree, these bills seem reasonable for what I am seeing too. I moved into Juniper in December - 1st bill was in the high $300's less the startup fees, just got the January bill it was ~$350. I too have the programable stats (68 degrees weekends and 5-7am/5-11pm weekdays all others 62 degress)

We run the fireplace about 3-4 times/week for a few hours too. A freind at work told me that the fireplace technician they had look at their's said it costs about $25+/month just to keep the pilot light running on the fireplace here.

Limited cooking on this front -

Agree that the budget plan is a great way to spreadout these costs across the year. Do it with the power bill too. Makes budgeting monthly much easier.

 

Yeah, we've been quite happy with the gas bills coming in under $400. This is a welcome change from last winter when we got two invoices for nearly $600 each.

You have to love poor insulation and builder's grade windows. Just feel that cold breeze coming through them!

 

Steve - 62 degress during the day (7am-5pm) and at night (11pm-5am)
.

 

yeah, We had the same problem when we moved in last year, get a timed theromstat. This will help take care of regulating heating bill. Also get Washington Gas to average your bill out for the whole year. It keeps you from having any major surprises.

 

Thanks for all the replies and advice.

 

Ours was ~$166 last month... 2100sq ft 3 level townhouse, end unit. 68 when occupied, 58 at night and when at work.... we also use the basement fireplace alot...

 

We have 2600 square feet - ours was $230 for January. Our thermostat is 72 when we're home, 65 when we're not (summer: 76 home/82 not home).

Two things:

One: Buy the programmable thermostat. If your house is empty for hours during the day it WILL save you money. Just don't alter the home/away temperatures by more than about 10 degrees. More than that and you pay just as much with your system trying to "recover" from the temperature difference.

Even if you have kids that come home from school during mid afternoon - setting the thermostat back from 72 to about 65 from 8 am to 2 pm will save you $$$.

Two: Your fireplace will run you about 30¢ per hour. Get your money's worth out of it by installing the blower fan, if your model accepts one. We did this the first year. The fan cost us about $200 - we installed it ourselves (including running the wall switch and electric). One bonus of the fan (other than really cranking heat into the room), it keeps the wall around the fireplace cooler. Most homes, if you run the fireplace for a while the wall above it (or marble if you have that) get's so hot you can hardly put your hand there. The blower sends that heat into the room instead of into the wall - it also helps keep your mantle from being damaged by the heat over the years.

Three: Bonus item. You're house will "feel" warmer if you keep the humidity up. January is notoriously dry - think about installing a humidifier on your HVAC system, or put a room type (or larger) in the areas you use most.

You probably already knew all this...

That's my 2¢ savings.


Dawne

 

Wow! I guess we are lucky. We have a 4800 sq. ft house (including basement) and have lived in Broadlands for 5 years. We have never had a single bill over $350 for a single month. Its a single family home, dual-zone heating/cooling with programmable thermostats. We keep it at 69 (ranges 67-71) during the day and 66 (ranges 64-68) at night. We are very comfortable and could even go a degree or two lower (wearing sweaters) to get lower bills. Our bill for December was $250 and our most recent was for $310. I heard a couple of years back that some VM homes were getting $700 heating bills!!!1 [:0][:0]
I guess I can stop complaining to my wife about how expensive heating is....LOL! We got it good I guess.

Our home is an NVHome....you know, the NV of the neighborhood....LOL!! Whatever....

DwArFlOrD

 

We installed programmable thermostats at the beginning of January, and then our bill went UP $20 from December. What the ...?

68 degrees while we're home, 66 degrees for work and stuff.

$400 for 3600 sq ft plus a finished basement --- this sounds like it may be normal for VM houses?

 

Ours went up by about $70; we had programmable thermostats for both months. There could be a couple of reasons: January was a colder month than December; and the cost per BTU could have increased from December to January (you know, higher demand, so higher prices).

 

Will have to compare bills for unit costs for Dec and Jan. I will certainly feel better if we can attribute the increase in cost to that. We waited all month to see how much the programmable thermostats were helping, only to be disappointed!

 

December $200, January $230...

So I'd chock it up to the colder weather...no changes otherwise at our place.


Dawne

 

weweweewee dodododo nnnot papapapay our gas bibibillsss.

 

You really can't compare one month to the next after installing a programmable thermostat because the temperatures will always be different. I programmable thermostat will definitely help, but there are other variables in your gas bill (although much smaller) such as hot water and appliances that use gas. I choose not to have my gas payments spread out evenly and just bit the bullet in the winter because in the summer when we are spending more money on vacations and things we also have higher electric bills and water bills. Plus, you get into school shopping and things like. The winter you have to deal with the recovery from Christmas shopping, but other expenses tend to be lower as we aren't out and about doing as many things.

 

There is something called a heating/cooling degree day that gives a metric based on heating/cooling your house. It is a standard metric that the National Weather Service keeps records of. Here is a link that provides more information on heating/cooling degree day.
http://www.wunderground.com/about/faq/degreedays.asp

Here is also a link to the data for February 2005 http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KIAD/2005/2/17/MonthlyHistory.html .

If you are curious, compare the heating degree days for January this year to January last year. Then look at your gas bill for each month and you should be able to see a corelation. If you do not - it might indicate a problem with your system or some other issue (assuming that the rest of your gas use, like cooking or water heater, is pretty much the same).

As a side note, I have a weather station on my back deck and upload the results to Weather Underground for anyone to see. If you are curious to know what the weather is like in the Broadlands, here is the link for it.
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KVAASHBU4

It comes in handy during weather storms to see the barometer drop or being able to see how hard its raining.

 

That is so cool...thanks for the link. Always wanted to get me one of those...

 

Glad to hear there are some other weather enthusiasts out there

The model I have is the Davis Vantage Pro. I think they just released a new model called the Davis Vantage Pro 2 which introduces USB connectivity to the PC. There are lots of other model's out there.

If you get one or have any other questions about them, I'd be more than willing to help you set it up or give you some advice about it. Just click on my name and send me an email.

Wes