Author Topic: Really High Electric Bill  (Read 9406 times)

Cinder

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Really High Electric Bill
« on: April 04, 2013, 09:16:02 AM »
Calling all mustacheianatos! From my journal post...

Our energy consumption is INSANE.  We have a 1972 split level house.  We recently had an energy audit done, and we discovered that around our chimney, there was no ceiling... They just laid insulation across the gap, and blew insulation ontop of it.  The people who did the audit offered a discount up to the cost of the audit on work done, and we had them come in, build boxes around the pot lights (for 3" fire separation, and easier envelop sealing), they built an enclosure around the chimney, sealed the headers and everything in the attic, rebuilt our attach entry (it was just a piece of wood with a piece of insulation sitting ontop of it!), and added another 10 ~ 12inches of blown insulation ontop of what was already in there.  Over previous winters, we have had multiple $400~$600 electric bills. Here is a handy table from a spreadsheet I had made..

DateDaysKWHReading TypeAvg Daily UsgAvg TempAvg Daily Cost
1/10/2011333304E10027$9.09
2/8/2011297269A25124$23.31
2/8/2011297269A25124$23.31
3/10/2011304316E14431$13.45
4/7/2011282474A8840$8.35
5/10/2011331712E5254$4.94
6/13/201134763A2269$2.21
7/11/201128538E1972$1.94
8/5/201125450A1878$1.85
9/8/201134560E1671$1.67
10/5/201127695A2664$2.62
10/7/2011332201E6751$6.50
12/6/2011292674A9245$8.94
1/10/2012354464E12835$12.18
2/9/2012304463A14933$14.17
3/9/2012293528E12236$11.55
4/9/2012312385A7753$7.25
5/9/2012301174E3954$3.76
6/11/2012331585A4866$4.31
7/11/2012301441E4873$3.81
8/8/201228554A2076$1.68
9/18/201241846E2169$1.73
10/19/201231640E2156$1.73
11/16/2012282167E7747$6.07
12/17/2012311470A4740$3.82
1/21/2013351677E4832$3.94
2/19/2013297569A26126$20.65



Things to add in addition to the above...

My wife is 100% Indian by birth, but was brought over as an infant to the US.  She is around 85lbs, short, pettite, and is always freezing.. If Mrs. MM is half Indian and needs the house to be at 67.... My wife is 'cold' anytime it's below around 73ish. 

We live in Central PA... The winters get decently chilly out. 

Electric everything... Stove, Washer/Dryer, Water Heater (My guess by SN is our water-heater was new in about 2002).  Garage is poorly insulated... Since we don't have a basement, water heater is in the garage.   it previously was on a higher temp setting, I have lowered it a bit.  It is now ~120 at the tap instead of ~127-130.    There is an electric baseboard heater in the garage, on the OPPOSITE wall then the water heater.  That is set to ~50 to keep the pipes from freezing at the water heater during the winter.. It's usually around 33~36 over by my water heater (via walking around with a digital food thermometer... haha).
We've installed a garage door kit to make it so you could at least stop most of the wind that could come into our garage... There are large glass windows  (single pane) across one section of the door, everything else is all wood.   One recommendation was to build a small 'room' around the water heater.   Another option would possibly be a tankless heater, which we would/should move inside the house to avoid having to heat the garage.

We have a large, open downstairs, huge living room with cathedral ceiling. Our house is built on a concrete slab, and the garage/laundry Room/kitchen/den area is always colder then the rest of the house.    I think the slab just brings in the ground chill/garage chill, being as it's all part of the same slab...  We would love to tear up the floor ontop of the slab, put down some reflective insulation, some in floor heat, and then redo the floor, but our countertops are poured concrete,, custom cabinets done by the person who sold us the house. 

As a cost saving measure, we moved the TV (ducks to avoid the facepunch.. I'm working on that one) to the bedroom, keep the bedroom warm enough for her standards, and keep the rest of the house at the bottom of the 'comfort range' which equates to around 65~67 in the kitchen/den, ~68~71 in the living room/upstairs rooms.  All our thermostats are the old bimetal type.  I personally roam around the entire house in my boxers, and she thinks I'm nuts... I tell her to wear more layers, but she never does..

We have tried turning the tempature up downstairs to be in the 70~72 range, but I don't think the kitchen ever gets that warm, and she was always 'cold' no matter what I did, so I went back to the colder temps.. That just means I do most of the kitchen cleanup and a fair bit of the cooking.. That's about the only thing she goes down for. 

We keep the bedroom door cracked because the cats will scratch at the door if they can't come in, and wake her up.. I sleep like a rock, and she is frequently kept up by them.  With the door open, we have pretty wide swings with our in room temp, where the heat on the wall by me kicks in, works really hard, and usually gets so warm that I and her kick off the covers.  then it reaches the peak of the cycle, and the thermostat kicks off, and the temp drops to where we(she) is freezing, and pulls the covers back on. 


Question 1) .. How does humidity affect apparent temperature?   Central PA's not super cold temps feel very cold, and not super hot summers feel really hot with humidity factored in.  I'm not sure if part of it is her Indian blood, but she doesn't seem to ever 'feel' humidity.. She also doesn't really sweat(except for very rare, strenuous circumstances)..

Question 2) What's a good solution for the 'wife isn't comfortable in the house' problem, other then cranking all the thermostats to the roof?  I am working on getting her to wear more layers, but I don't think she gets that she can sleep in more then her regular pajama pants and shirt + hoodie, and when she gets home she changes out of her work clothes into said 'comfy'  cothes... I ask her if being warm or 'comfy' is more important.. and hand her a wool blanket...

superspeck

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #1 on: April 04, 2013, 10:10:55 AM »
To answer your actual questions:
A) When humidity is high, it will feel colder than it actually is or warmer than it actually is. Hence the jokes from Arizona "but it's a dry heat" and the jokes from Utah/Alaska/Colorado "but it's a dry cold." I don't think PA is ever really dry; the humidity is usually pretty high even in winter (wet snow). Wet cold penetrates your clothes and you MUST wear layers, and it helps if those layers are natural fibers. Silk or cotton against the skin, wool on the outside, breathable wind breaking layer (gore tex) outside of that when you go outside, down jacket under the wind breaking layer if it's below 30F. Always wear a hat and big fuzzy natural fur slippers when you're cold; those two parts of your body get cold and you feel it as your whole body being cold. You adapt to cold or heat, but you have to be willing to go out and work in it. If she just stays in the bedroom where it's warmer, she won't ever adapt. I say this as someone who lives in Texas and moved there from Portland, OR but was born in Chicago. I'm fine working outside on the roof in 90+ degree days now in jeans; the first summer I almost died. I freeze when it's 40 and raining out now. If we move north again, I'll adapt again. Kick your wife's butt into layers. The answer for "I don't want to wear layers" is "Well, I guess you'll be cold unless you learn to." (The obvious response is "You heartless jerk," to which my response is "yep, that's me!", but you have to toe the line between that and divorce papers.)

B) It's not clear to me if you have a central HVAC system or if you depend entirely on baseboard heat or Cadet-style room heaters. If it's the latter, then you might consider saving up to retrofit your house with a forced-air HVAC system. A forced air system will help keep the house (on the inside) at an even humidity which will help keep you more comfortable, and it's much more efficient.

Musing:
The question is how much money do you want to put into the refit. The company that did the energy audit already got most of the low hanging fruit. You're not going to see a payoff in terms of money, but you'll reap the rewards in terms of comfort. If you have enough money, or you're willing to do the work yourself, you can fix a lot of those things, but it means tearing apart significant parts of your house to add insulation or thermal breaks.

Cheaper than the space heater in the garage for your pipe heating needs are resistance wire wraps for pipes. If you have copper plumbing (I hope it's copper and not galvanized) then you should just need to heat a few places.

Note: You don't want reflective insulation on the slab; that won't do anything, especially in winter. Radiant barriers don't block cold, they reflect heat (infrared) back to you (or back out). You want polyisocyanurate foam panels as a thermal break and a heated floor surface over that.

What kind of windows do you have? Do you have newer thermal pane windows or are the windows original to the house? That's the next low hanging fruit if your windows are original to the house.

That electric bill isn't high on a day to day basis if you look at it as a Texas summer. On days when it's over 100, we spend that much in electricity to keep the house at 80 degrees.

Does your electric company have "budget billing" that helps you level out the different months?
« Last Edit: April 04, 2013, 10:23:31 AM by superspeck »

MountainFlower

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #2 on: April 04, 2013, 10:12:56 AM »
First, I sympathize with your wife.  I'm of Scandinavian descent but I'm cold all the time, so I'm not sure ethnicity really plays into it. 

Second, that slab has got to be cold.  She might want to consider wool blend socks at home with shoes.  Change them over the course of the day and especially when she gets home.  Wet, cotton socks = freezing for me.  If my feet are cold, I could be wearing down jackets and pants from head to ankle and still be freezing. 

Third, Wood heat is warm.  Can you look for a used fireplace insert and try wood heat?  Nothing beats it for staying warm for me.  Radiant heat, i.e., fire, trumps convective hot air any day of the week for comfort.

Finally, we have radiant heat in gypcrete in our house and it is, well, dreamy to be honest.  It is also efficient.  You don't put it under cabinets, so you could install something without disturbing your cabinets.  However, your counter top height would be 1.5 inches lower.  If your wife is petite, she'll love it!

As a cold person, I appreciate your pursuit of comfort for your wife.  The only time in my life I have felt like normal people and not cold all the time was when I was pregnant.  It sucks to be cold all the time. 

gecko10x

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #3 on: April 04, 2013, 10:46:27 AM »
The above is good advice, except for this:


B) It's not clear to me if you have a central HVAC system or if you depend entirely on baseboard heat or Cadet-style room heaters. If it's the latter, then you might consider saving up to retrofit your house with a forced-air HVAC system. A forced air system will help keep the house (on the inside) at an even humidity which will help keep you more comfortable, and it's much more efficient.


That is misleading, if not completely incorrect. First, "forced-air HVAC" is a delivery mechanism, not a heat source. There are multiple types of systems that used forced-air for delivery (heat pumps, gas furnace, electric furnace, etc.), and the efficiency of each system type is not even the proper metric- you care about cost, not efficiency. Electric resistance heaters are near 100% efficient, but typically cost much more (per heat unit) than natural gas heat because gas is cheaper.

From www.energyguide.com
Quote
Electric resistance heating converts nearly 100% of the energy in the electricity to heat. However, most electricity is produced from oil, gas, or coal generators that convert only about 30% of the fuel's energy into electricity. Because of electricity's generation and transmission losses, electric heat is often more expensive than heat produced in the home with combustion appliances, such as natural gas, propane, and oil furnaces.

"Mr. Energy" has good chart Here (half-way down the page) on the cost differences of central systems. Here is his heating page 1, and there's tons of great info in there, and elsewhere on the site.

Cinder

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #4 on: April 04, 2013, 10:48:43 AM »
You adapt to cold or heat, but you have to be willing to go out and work in it.

When I was growing up, when the radio said 'If you can stay inside, do it, don't do any strenuous work outside' my dad had my brother and I putting Aluminum fiber coat on the roof of a building at his shop.  We just soaked our t-shirts, tied the arms around the back of our head like a bandana, and flopped it over our heads.  when the shirt dried up and we got to warm, we would go down, grab a drink, and re-soak the shirt.

It was also 19F this morning for the bike ride in to work today.. 3x leg underlayers + dress pants ontop, 3x shirt underlayers, 2x wool sweaters, and my bright yellow DON'T HIT ME shirt, + some thinsulate carheart gloves and a face mask was plenty.   I felt like a bit of a wussypants compared to MMM's description of what layers he needs, but then I thought of the above humidity differences.  Snow is also a different animal here, it doesn't get soaked back up into the air due to the humidity, and will often persist long after a snowfall.. Our local Ski/Snowboarding mountain was open until last weekend!

B) It's not clear to me if you have a central HVAC system or if you depend entirely on baseboard heat or Cadet-style room heaters. If it's the latter, then you might consider saving up to retrofit your house with a forced-air HVAC system. A forced air system will help keep the house (on the inside) at an even humidity which will help keep you more comfortable, and it's much more efficient.

It's all electric baseboard, but we do have a fireplace, which I address a little later.  The Energy Audit company suggested going for several Ductless Mini-splits, that would allow us to retain zonal heating. Our house also would be difficult to run the HVAC vents.   I'll try to get some floorplans and whatnot on this post in the future.

Cheaper than the space heater in the garage for your pipe heating needs are resistance wire wraps for pipes. If you have copper plumbing (I hope it's copper and not galvanized) then you should just need to heat a few places.

Copper pipes indeed!  We also have a non-functioning water softener that is hooked up, called in about getting it serviced, and due to it's age they said it wasn't worth fixing.  I'm not sure if I should just let it hooked up as it is now with the bypass valve on, or just remove the thing and put in a pipe fitting.

I recently put some foam insulation around the pipes to try to help out with some of the heat loss, but the resistance wire wrap sounds like a much better way to go.. I also assume I should look into a thermal blanket to put around the whole water heater..

Note: You don't want reflective insulation on the slab; that won't do anything, especially in winter. Radiant barriers don't block cold, they reflect heat (infrared) back to you (or back out). You want polyisocyanurate foam panels as a thermal break and a heated floor surface over that.

What kind of windows do you have? Do you have newer thermal pane windows or are the windows original to the house?

The windows downstairs are still older wooden windows, double pane.  The windows upstairs are newer vinyl windows, but the area around the frames was pretty leaky.. I pulled off the trim, and added spray foam around them.  I'm waiting on the summer, and trying to figure out if I should refinish the trim before I put it up or find some new trim.  5 windows total, existing trim looks like it has been put back up at least once before..  I'd be putting it up with a ball-peen hammer instead of a nailgun, so it would be a bit more labor intensive.

That electric bill isn't high on a day to day basis if you look at it as a Texas summer. On days when it's over 100, we spend that much in electricity to keep the house at 80 degrees.

Does your electric company have "budget billing" that helps you level out the different months?

We don't use any AC in the summer at all.  My Mother HAS to have AC blasting all the time, so she bought a cheap wallmart AC for when she visits, we let her turn her room into an icebox, and keep the door closed.  If we are having a heatwave, and the humidity makes it to high, we set the AC for a reasonable temp (like 85) for our bedroom.  We had ceiling fans installed after our first summer in the house, no air movement + humidity with around 100* temps was unbearable.  The air movement was a huge plus. Our summer bills in the table above are all very minimal.  Since it is historic data, Computer on 24/7, cable box on 24/7, Electric range for cooking, Ceiling fans on in the summer for our baseline. 

We  have a sufficient enough cash reserves that 'spiky' bills with our electric isn't that big a deal.. We just know it will be higher in the winter and lower in the summer. 


Second, that slab has got to be cold.  She might want to consider wool blend socks at home with shoes.  Change them over the course of the day and especially when she gets home.  Wet, cotton socks = freezing for me.  If my feet are cold, I could be wearing down jackets and pants from head to ankle and still be freezing. 
She has wool socks that she usually wears, in addition to slippers.  I think sometimes she wears the cotton socks, perhaps I can get her to switch full time to wool socks till it gets warm again. 

Third, Wood heat is warm.  Can you look for a used fireplace insert and try wood heat?  Nothing beats it for staying warm for me.  Radiant heat, i.e., fire, trumps convective hot air any day of the week for comfort.
We have some firewood, and our fireplace is just open.  I have considered an insert before, but haven't looked into it much.  DW likes the 'real' fireplace, but is always to cold to really enjoy it, and it is hard to keep enough air circulation to keep it going.. I'm always tending it myself, and we can't let it go overnight.  Perhaps it is time to add a bit more that way. 

As a cold person, I appreciate your pursuit of comfort for your wife.  The only time in my life I have felt like normal people and not cold all the time was when I was pregnant.  It sucks to be cold all the time.
On our honeymoon in Barbados/St. Lucia, she was cold!   The only times she wasn't was when she was in the hot tub just outside our room, or laying in the sun.  Even wearing her full wetsuit in the water, she was cold right away!

MountainFlower

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #5 on: April 04, 2013, 11:11:53 AM »

We have some firewood, and our fireplace is just open.  I have considered an insert before, but haven't looked into it much.  DW likes the 'real' fireplace, but is always to cold to really enjoy it, and it is hard to keep enough air circulation to keep it going.. I'm always tending it myself, and we can't let it go overnight.  Perhaps it is time to add a bit more that way. 



There are some glass-fronted, wood-burning inserts.  We built our house, so we put in a regular zero clearance fireplace that heats our very open log home with 25 ft cathedral ceilings.  It is amazing.  It is a Fireplace Xtrordinair and it has a blower that makes all the difference. 

They also make inserts, but they aren't cheap.  However, they make a quality product, if the inserts are like our fireplace, it will warm your house.  There are probably other brands out there that might be cheaper.   There may also be tax credits. 

http://www.fireplacex.com/ProductGuide/FuelTypeOverview.aspx?fueltype=wood&fueltab=0

AJ

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #6 on: April 04, 2013, 11:16:35 AM »
We keep the bedroom door cracked because the cats will scratch at the door if they can't come in, and wake her up..

This may sound odd, but to resolve a similar issue in our old house we installed a small cat door on our bedroom door. This let's the cats go in and out while keeping most of the warm air inside. Yes, we had to replace the door when we moved, but with your energy bills it might be worth it, depending on how long you think you'll live there.

Use it up, wear it out...

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #7 on: April 04, 2013, 11:25:36 AM »
Have you considered moving?

GuitarStv

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #8 on: April 04, 2013, 11:26:50 AM »
You can actually wrap insulation or a blanket around your water heater to reduce heat loss to the cold garage which would be a lot cheaper and easier to do than building a separate room for it.

m8547

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #9 on: April 04, 2013, 11:27:23 AM »
You can try an insulation wrap for the water heater, and definitely insulate any exposed hot water pipes. Setting the water temperature as low as you can stand will help too. If your water heater is from 2002, it's probably near the end of its life.

For the bedroom, maybe install a cat door? It sounds silly, but it will let the cats move freely and keep the heat in.

Forced hot air will help with the rooms with the cathedral ceilings. With radiant, all the warm air rises, cools off, and sinks back down, so the heaters are working more than they have to to heat the ceiling, and the house always feels cold and drafty. A ceiling fan might also help, and most can be run in reverse so you don't get air blowing directly on you (which would feel cold) but there is some circulation of the upper air by the ceiling. It would also help keep you cool in the summer.

For the cold slab, get some good slippers. Maybe even battery powered heated slippers (with rechargeable batteries so you aren't wasting batteries all the time). Another thing that might help is microwaveable heating pads. You can sew your own by filling cloth bags with rice or buckwheat (I think). The energy used to heat one up is minimal (less than 0.2 cents for a minute in the microwave) but the warmth lasts a while.

If you can get gas, I would recommend that for future retrofits/upgrades. Direct resistance electric heat is one of the least efficient ways to heat because of the inefficiency of generating electricity. To produce electricity, the utility company burns gas (cheaper than coal last I heard), and on the order of 60% of the energy can be converted into electricity, and the rest is wasted heat (due to laws of thermodynamics). If you get an efficient gas heater, you can keep more like 95% of the energy as heat, and the rest is wasted in the exhaust.

People keep posting my ideas before me!

MountainFlower

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #10 on: April 04, 2013, 11:55:05 AM »


Forced hot air will help with the rooms with the cathedral ceilings. With radiant, all the warm air rises, cools off, and sinks back down, so the heaters are working more than they have to to heat the ceiling, and the house always feels cold and drafty.



I don't want to start an argument, but this is the opposite of everything I've ever read...and I read a lot when we were building our home.  Heat does not rise, hot air does.  When you blow hot air into a room, it immediately rises (convection).  Radiant heat, i.e., from a floor or a hot water heater, radiates out and heats the space molecule by molecule.  When we were building with our high cathedral ceilings, we were told to avoid forced air.  This is confirmed by our fireplace, which has a blower.  A lot of the hot air ends up in the loft as the hot air immediately rises.   A good deal of the heat still ends up on the main floor too, but the blower really sends the temperature up upstairs in the loft .

Cinder

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #11 on: April 04, 2013, 12:18:23 PM »
For the bedroom, maybe install a cat door? It sounds silly, but it will let the cats move freely and keep the heat in.

Haha, I've suggested this one, but she doesn't want it to be 'ugly'... They are just cheap, hollow doors!  I suggested that I can do it to a door, and possibly shuffle the door between the bedroom in the winter and the garage in the summer, they love it out there. 

Another thing that came to mind. 

Our kitchen is laid out really weird.. Like I said, I'll try to get a more proper floorplan up here, but the layout is rougly like this
 -- or |   wall
 ( archway
\ or /  Door
= stairs
[ sliding door

w window
* thermostat

  |------------------------------|
  |                                      |
  |     Garage                     |
  |                                      |
  |------------\-----------------|
w|     |   LR       |                |w
   |-------------\--|                |/
w|                    (        Den     |
   |                  *|                   |
   |    kitchen     |----------(=)-|
   [                    |==|             |
   |  heater       |==|             |
   |----------(=)--|==|             |
w|        *         (                   |bay w
   | h                (                 t |bay w
w|eat              |          h e a | 
   |---------------|----------------|


The thermostat for the kitchen is over by the den/laundry room.  The Dining room and Living room (unmarked) are a few steps above, not directly on the slab.  There is no baffel or whatever you would call it at the top of the door from the kitchen to the dining room, and all the heat from the heater seems to gather right at the steps from the kitchen to the dining room. 

This is one reason why we were thinking of insulating the slab and putting in infloor heat.  Better heat distribution across the kitchen at least. 

superspeck

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #12 on: April 04, 2013, 04:03:01 PM »
It's all electric baseboard, but we do have a fireplace, which I address a little later.  The Energy Audit company suggested going for several Ductless Mini-splits, that would allow us to retain zonal heating. Our house also would be difficult to run the HVAC vents.   I'll try to get some floorplans and whatnot on this post in the future.

It depends on what kind of system you put in and your tolerance for tearing out chunks of drywall or adding chases for them to run through to rooms. Short people have more tolerance for these things than tall people do. It'd probably be pretty easy for a talented technician to figure it out. Heck, we figured it out in a friend's two story house here in Texas -- he just lost a little bit of closet space.

The above is good advice, except for this:

B) It's not clear to me if you have a central HVAC system or if you depend entirely on baseboard heat or Cadet-style room heaters. If it's the latter, then you might consider saving up to retrofit your house with a forced-air HVAC system. A forced air system will help keep the house (on the inside) at an even humidity which will help keep you more comfortable, and it's much more efficient.

That is misleading, if not completely incorrect. First, "forced-air HVAC" is a delivery mechanism, not a heat source. There are multiple types of systems that used forced-air for delivery (heat pumps, gas furnace, electric furnace, etc.), and the efficiency of each system type is not even the proper metric- you care about cost, not efficiency. Electric resistance heaters are near 100% efficient, but typically cost much more (per heat unit) than natural gas heat because gas is cheaper.

Well, if he's got electric heat across the board, he's probably going to have an electric furnace. Not what *I'd* pick in that part of the country, but I do like my gas stove and heat when the power's out.

What is it about forced air heaters that seem to, in the winter, produce dryer heat than radiant heat sources? Or maybe that's a heat pump that we had running; I don't remember what we had, as I was a small child last time we lived in the Great White North. Another aspect of forced air systems vs. radiant systems is that you can put a humidity control system in line to either add moisture to or remove moisture from the air. Which is another option for you, Cinder. What if you got a dehumidifier?

I also assume I should look into a thermal blanket to put around the whole water heater..

Find the manual for your hot water heater (probably online for free from the manufacturer) before you do this! There are a lot of newer hot water heaters, made since 2002 or so, that cannot have blankets on them. There is a caution in my hot water heater (made in 2010, AO Smith, gas) that specifically says not to put a blanket on the heater. It does not say why and I'm not familiar with why.

Quote
The windows downstairs are still older wooden windows, double pane.  The windows upstairs are newer vinyl windows, but the area around the frames was pretty leaky.. I pulled off the trim, and added spray foam around them.  I'm waiting on the summer, and trying to figure out if I should refinish the trim before I put it up or find some new trim.  5 windows total, existing trim looks like it has been put back up at least once before..  I'd be putting it up with a ball-peen hammer instead of a nailgun, so it would be a bit more labor intensive.

That's all good! Spray foam is awesome stuff. And you should consider, if you can fit into your budget, getting just a cheap finish nailer.. or finding a buddy who has one. It turns trim work from a chore into a delight and reduces the resistance that you have to tearing into something. Tools like that, even if you find cheap ones from Harbor Freight or Canadian Tire and a little $50 compressor (or one from a Pawn Shop), are a good investment because they remove the sting of committing yourself to a lot of manual labor and improve the quality of the results you get.

Cinder

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #13 on: April 04, 2013, 05:11:59 PM »
Find the manual for your hot water heater (probably online for free from the manufacturer) before you do this!

Water Heater is a Bradford White Hydrojet mi50s6ds13.. According to http://www.bradfordwhite.com/findaserial.asp, with a SN of Zf3365711, it was manufactured in June of 2003.  I'm having trouble finding a manual for it though.  It has various warnings on it, but it doesn't mention blankets / tank wraps / extra insulation on the unit itself.  It does have some yellow fibre insulation inside the outer shell of the unit, but it is still pretty warm to the touch compared to our garage ambient temp.   

Jamesqf

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #14 on: April 04, 2013, 05:24:07 PM »
For sleeping, have you considered a waterbed?  You can set the temperature to whatever feels comfortable, and (if the bed frame itself is insulated), the electric cost is far less than heating a whole room.

I also second the above comments about water heater pipe insulation & heating tape.  Garage doors are almost always leaky, so that could be where a lot of your power is going.  Also consider adding insulation (4x8 foam is easiest) to the wall between the garage & house.  And nice, thick rugs on the floors.

c

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #15 on: April 04, 2013, 06:31:19 PM »
I'm above an unfinished basement and also the boiler which has to be vented*, so cold air blows up through my floor. It's awful. I'm also alway cold, always. Things that helped me the most were rugs with rug pads, insulation and wearing socks in the house. The insulation made a crazy difference.

I also got this for Christmas http://www.amazon.com/Woolrich-Hudson-Capote-Throw-70-Inch/dp/B000T2VLAC/ref=sr_1_24?ie=UTF8&qid=1365121699&sr=8-24&keywords=woolrich+throw+blanket I have it directly on top of me. It's amazingly warm. My husband is never cold so the throw works out as I can have it only over me. If I had my way I'd have got the blanket, but my husband claims he would have "melted".

I cannot overstate the difference the insulation made.

*I don't want to think about how much money we (the building) are wasting keeping the boiler water hot. I keep meaning to look into this some more.

Rural

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #16 on: April 04, 2013, 06:42:12 PM »
For sleeping, have you considered a waterbed?  You can set the temperature to whatever feels comfortable, and (if the bed frame itself is insulated), the electric cost is far less than heating a whole room.

While you're absolutely right about the cost of the electric, let me put this in from the perspective of a perpetually cold woman (PCW) married to a Hot Man :-) . 

When the waterbed temp is something that PCW can stand -- by which I mean sleeping happens rather than lying awake, stiff and aching and trying to suppress the shivers so as not to make too many waves so that at least one of you gets some sleep -- the HM will lie there awake instead, gasping and panting with the heat. There are no zones in a waterbed. I know all this from sad experience.

May I suggest instead a heated mattress pad, one of the ones with individual controls for each side. These are much better for keeping a PCW comfortable at night than an electric blanket, and if she's not chilled to the bone overnight, she'all handle the house temps better all day.

MountainFlower

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #17 on: April 04, 2013, 09:11:44 PM »
Yes to the heated mattress pad with dual controls.  I turn mine on a few minutes before bedtime and then turn it off once I'm in.  I'm always coldest right before bed, which I think is typical.  Crawling into a warm bed does make a big difference. 

What is it about us PCWs?  I've heard it can be thyroid, but I've had mine checked multiple times.  My body temperature at the doctor was 95.8 the other day.  It's crazy.   

We built a custom house (not mustachian) but it is easy to keep warm with our efficient fireplace, infloor radiant heat and passive solar with colorado, high altitude sun.  It's a dream.  Unfortunately, I never want to sell it even though it would bring FI years sooner because I know I'll never have a house that keeps me warm like this one if I do. 

N

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #18 on: April 04, 2013, 09:39:39 PM »
will your wife try those silk long underwear? they are comfy and not bulky. should go a long way to making her warmer. and maybe fleece lined slippers.

Cinder

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #19 on: April 05, 2013, 04:09:54 AM »
She has fleece slippers and silk long underwear... I just need to get her to understand she can wear more then her regular 'pajamas' to sleep in..

We have a Temperpedic bed.  They are pretty warm to begin with.  I bought it when I first got my job, they offered a 2k 'moving expenses' initial employment bonus, and I used it to buy a mattress... I broke my C1 (stabalized fracture in two locations) my seinor year of highschool, and wanted to invest in a good nights sleep!  The bed is still going strong since 2007!

While you're absolutely right about the cost of the electric, let me put this in from the perspective of a perpetually cold woman (PCW) married to a Hot Man :-) . 

When the waterbed temp is something that PCW can stand -- by which I mean sleeping happens rather than lying awake, stiff and aching and trying to suppress the shivers so as not to make too many waves so that at least one of you gets some sleep -- the HM will lie there awake instead, gasping and panting with the heat.

Haha, Yea, we are the PCW and the Hot Man!  I usually lay half under the covers and half out, and I roll over every so often. 

As a PCW, is it that you 'are' cold, or that you 'feel' cold?  There are lots of times where the DW says that it is cold, but what she really means is that to me, she feels slightly warm to the touch, and that makes the apparent temp of the room feel colder. 

anotherAlias

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #20 on: April 05, 2013, 04:43:55 AM »
I bought a down alternative comforter this winter that made a HUGE difference for me.  I went from shivering every night to almost being too hot.  So that might be perfect for your wife.  If you got a twin size, she could use it on her side of the bed without roasting you.  My boyfriend and I have found that separate covers work best for us.

Rural

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #21 on: April 05, 2013, 05:24:14 AM »

As a PCW, is it that you 'are' cold, or that you 'feel' cold?  There are lots of times where the DW says that it is cold, but what she really means is that to me, she feels slightly warm to the touch, and that makes the apparent temp of the room feel colder.

In my case, some of both. Something it took my husband a while to understand is the difference between our ratios of surface area to central body mass. I'm much smaller than he is, and this means that, all else being equal, I will bleed heat off faster than he does. I believe you said your wife is 85 pounds? She's probably actually cold.

superspeck

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Re: Really High Electric Bill
« Reply #22 on: April 05, 2013, 11:02:56 AM »
You actually bleed most of your heat through your hands, feet, groin, and head. You bleed less heat through any area that is covered with fat, minor and non-obvious fat or not. Women have the added advantage over skinny men of breasts, although my fiancee says they always get cold in the type of tops I like her to wear... *cough* *ahem*

So wearing layers that cover most of your skin, wearing good wool socks (remember, you can wear more than one pair of socks, and it's often to your advantage to wear a pair of silk socks and a pair of wool socks, or if your feet sweat like mine, a pair of cotton or artificial fiber wicking socks that you might swap out several times a day with a pair of thick wool socks over top), insulated slippers with natural fur and not fleece, wearing a hat when you're cold, wearing several layers of wool with a wicking, or silk, or cotton under-layer, underneath... THAT is how you will stay warm in a cold house.

I don't like waterbeds because they eventually, somewhere, somehow, will spring a leak.