Got my garage electrical bill......

[bucs012]

$44 is going to break me! Just kidding.

Used about 549 killowatts in 31 days. I heated her up (electric heat) a lot this last month as it was mainly -15 to 10 degrees all month! Had my extra division wall put in my my contractor and if you remember right my workers were in there 5 full days with the 2 Dayton heaters running. There were 3 full days we heated her 24/7 to get the mud and paint to dry from sheetrocking the new walls. Heated 2 seperate 15x20 rooms up for 7 to 10 hour periods many times over the month too, working on projects and painting my Harley colored room.

This also includes my 19 Lithonia, 4 bulb, 4ft lights being on, stereo etc.

Now I am looking at Mini Split, non duct air for the summer......

 

[Boyd Who]

549 KWH in a month is pretty good! The electric forced-air furnace in our house can use that in a couple or three days when it's really cold out!

 

[tdkkart]

Here's my bills for Feb 2009 and Feb 2010 for my 30x40x12 pole building, all electric radiant floor heat, runnig 24/7.

Month KW Amount Days $$$/day KW/day
02/10 1,253 $130.24 28 $4.65 44.75

02/09 1,219 $125.68 29 $4.33 42.03

I'm really quite pleased with this year's bill. last year I was heating only 16x30to approx. 55*. This year I am heating the entire building to the same inside temp, and this year's average outside temp was 6* lower than last year's.
I corrected some insulation problems on the original portion and carefully insulated the remaining area when I finished it this summer.

Yes, I could heat with gas cheaper, however it's not a real good option for a variety of reasons, plus this was already there.
I know guys that spend more in the tavern than I spend heating my shop.

 

[nate379]

You guys must have some super cheap electric rates! 1250 Kw/hr would be ~$250 for me, which is roughly was electric and gas for my house and garage costs me.

 

[tdkkart]

You guys must have some super cheap electric rates! 1250 Kw/hr would be ~$250 for me, which is roughly was electric and gas for my house and garage costs me.

My bill for the shop says 10.3 cents/KW delivered, before taxes. Handy part is the rate goes down as I use more, actual rate starts at 9 cents, goes down to 4 cents, 1200KW or 1500KW ends up costing the same amount of money.

 

[belvedere]

Ours is 9.3/kWh. I am still deciding how to heat my garage. I haven't insulated yet, so still have plenty of time.

I calculated it out, and heating w/ gas would cost a little less than half of what electricity would. It's just that the initial cost would be higher with gas, since I'd have to hire someone to run the gas line to the garage and then to the heater. With electric heat, I could do it all myself. I guess I need to figure how much time I'm going to spend out there and want it heated.

 

[bucs012]

It really does depend on where you're at and what your electric to gas costs are.

My kWh is only 6.5 cents on the garage, 200 amp service, seperate meter from house. House is only 100 amps, but 7.4 cents per kWh for the first 1,000 and then goes to 6.9 after that. I can't touch GAS heating my garage for this. Gas prices are higher for us. House alone for gas was $151 last month, 66 degrees when we're not home and 68 when we are. Electric was $95.

I had 2 places come out to quote running gas lines out to the detached 50x30 and it was around $1500. Add to that the cost of $2300 furnace instal and price of furnace it would have been years for me to break even compared to electric with our low electric cost. Yes, I know some people do all this on their own.......I don't know how and was not about to TRY it playing around with gas...........

 

[BioHazard]

Hell, I use that much to flush the toilet. Current bill in front of me is 3,458kWh for 29 days.

 

[nate379]

Mine is $0.19 KW/hr, fixed rate.

 

[930dreamer]

Seperate shop from house by 10 miles, electricity 0, I pay about $25 a month for gas heater.

 

[tcianci]

Wife takes care of paying the bills so I never see the KwH usage but I posted somewhere else that I was keeping my 22x25 at 65-70 with a 1500W heater 24/7. We got the electric bill and it was 60 bucks more than usual, so it comes out to 2 bucks a day. The garage also has a 25K Btu hydronic unit heater, The boiler has a 1.65 gallon/hr nozzle and oil is 2.70 a gallon so I could run the boiler less than an hour for 2 bucks. So since I was only heating the garage 3-4 hours a day on the oil, I can heat it 24/7 for a little more with the electric heater.. I think the real problem with the hydronic heater was that I was letting the garage cool to 45-50 every day and then bringing it up to temp every night. It may be better to keep it at 60 and then bump it up at night. If anyone has looked at this please chime in.

 

[Phuckin' Jim]

Our last elect. bill was $77 for the house & garage.

 

[Boyd Who]

Our last elect. bill was $77 for the house & garage.

Our last (Feb) hydro bill was $405. That's just the house. It's a 100 y/o house and it's all electric. The 25KW forced-air furnace eats alot of juice.

 

[Teken]

Our last (Feb) hydro bill was $405. That's just the house. It's a 100 y/o house and it's all electric. The 25KW forced-air furnace eats alot of juice.

Do you plan on upgrading this house in terms of heat loss and insulation?

I don't even know what to say about a $405.00 bill for electricity!

 

[Teken]

message too short blah blah

 

[jvitez]

We averaged 5155 kwh per month for the last 12 months for our house, essentially all electric geothermal. We only use gas for a cooktop and a rarely used fireplace. The Canadian prairies: land of extremes We get plus 30C in the summer and -30-35C in the winter. About once a decade we get -40C. So we need much heat in the winter and much cooling in the summer. Thankfully our hydro electric generated costs are only 6.3 cents/kwh.

Your garage heating costs are excellent. Great job!

 

[tdkkart]

We averaged 5155 kwh per month for the last 12 months for our house,

Holy ****!!! Just looked, our average for the last 18 months on the house and the shop together has been just a smidge over 1500kw, just over 900/mo on the house, just over 600 on the shop. House is all electric except the furnace, shop is electric heated.
Admittedly, we are a low useage household, no kids at home, we both work nights so our lights are not on when alot of other people are home, and we don't leave all the lights on in the house even when we are home. We are not however afraid to use electricity as needed.
Even with our somewhat modest useage patterns, we are still only 20-30% lower than the power company's claimed residential average.

You gotta be running a convention center to be using 5000kw/month.

 

[jvitez]

You gotta be running a convention center to be using 5000kw/month.

About 1700 kwh a month is to run the circulating fans and heat recovery ventilators. We have 4 zones, water to water geothermal with water to air high velocity ducting/fan coil heating/cooling. Each zone needs to be running 24/7 minimize heat stratification and to allow the HRV make up air to circulate properly. We built just before the HVAC guys had easy access to DC voltage fan coils, which would vary power consumption in proportion to speed. Live and learn. It would cost way to much to change now, so we'll just leave it as is and whenever they need replacement we'll get DC motor fan coils.

In any case, this house is 40% bigger than our last and costs the same to heat/cool. Previous house was NG forced air furnace, NG water heater, and regular AC. Our current one is also much more comfortable.

It's great you can heat your pole barn for such a reasonable cost. I would have loved in floor radiant in our attached garage, but the Mrs. is mouse-phobic and refuses to let me heat the garage all winter. So I'm planning to install forced air heat to allow quick warm ups when I want. Steady, even, in floor heat all winter sounds wonderful!

 

[Boyd Who]

Do you plan on upgrading this house in terms of heat loss and insulation?

I don't even know what to say about a $405.00 bill for electricity!

We plan to look into adding some insulation around the perimeter of the house, on top of the foundation walls. That's where the biggest issue is.
All the windows are new, the walls themselves aren't too bad, and the attic is well insulated.

On the plus side...our electric bill in the summer can be as low as $30 as we don't have a/c.

 

[Teken]

Al,

Sounds good, keep us all updated as to how the reno's reflect the bills next winter. Winter It's almost done I can feel it . . .

 

[Boyd Who]

Yup, I think spring is here finally. Almost all the snow is gone around here, pretty soon I'll be able to start gettings ready to move that small garage to our yard.