WA HOO FarmerChick

[FarmerChick]

2bz----RANT AWAY cause I am right there with you!!

I know....but hubby told me he heard that the commission did not allow Duke Power the full increase. Cause that increase was high I thought.
geez, people can barely afford a roof over their head, how can they heat homes if they rely on electric?? All those older people on fixed incomes?

I tell ya it is bad out there. Those rising costs are rising too fast for people to adapt. UGH UGH

 

[snapshot]

Yep. 6 gallon and sence we turn off the shower head while we are lathering/washing, we don't use it up when we do need it. We do the turn off in the shower thing since we lived in the desert for a while and realized how little water some places have.

 

[FarmerChick]

oh yea we take those 'military showers' also in the camper.

Absolutely we would turn off the head and lather up etc. Then on to rinse.

When needed, it is truly truly amazing how much we DON'T need to use. And you know the hot water being small in gallons was never an inconvenience in the camper.



and it is funny cause I would never think of turning off the water in my shower in the house as I take one. Cause I don't HAVE to conserve. but in that camper you do have to conserve.

wow that says alot about me

hmmm.......

 

[snapshot]

Whatever house we end up in we are getting a shower head that is detachable and on/off. It is a big help washing the pups and even when cleaning the shower. At the dairy I sometimes have to run cold water to cool milk down, like for yogurt, and I always feel so guilty letting it run!

 

[pinkfox]

hmm now thata good idea on the watr heater...i might have to do that, my electric bill right now isnt too bad, but i know itll only get higher if i become complacent.

my new shower head has the on/off feature, i just need someone to get the old shower head off for me, ive tried and im pretty sure ill rip the pipe out of the wall before i manage to get it loose lol, there must be a trick to it! its sneaky!

 

[i_am2bz]

2bz----RANT AWAY cause I am right there with you!!

I know....but hubby told me he heard that the commission did not allow Duke Power the full increase. Cause that increase was high I thought.
geez, people can barely afford a roof over their head, how can they heat homes if they rely on electric?? All those older people on fixed incomes?

I think they went to the commission asking for 18% - ARE YOU FREAKIN KIDDING ME???? EIGHTEEN PERCENT???

The complaints were so bad, I think they scaled it back by half - like 9% isn't terrible enough, & we're supposed to be grateful???

See what you did, FC, you got me ranting again!!!

 

[Marianne]

The heating/ac is the other biggie. I have a propane fireplace I use in super cold winter to keep the heat pump off (cause on very cold nights it kicks onto the heat/elec strip for heating. THAT is big bucks. So we got the warm fireplace to help that (and I love the look of the fireplace in the living room lol)


I love trying to beat the electric bill. Truly I don't know why but I got this itch to go lower and lower on that bill.
One of those weird obsessions I guess.

I hear ya on that heat pump! We have one, too. Love it 8 or 9 months out of the year, but those cold months? Agh. Heat strip = $550 per month electric bills for us. And I was cold, too!

I have that same obsession about our electric bill. I love the chart thingy that your company has available. Ours just lists KWh for 'this month last year' and a little bar graph so you can see how much you have used each month during the last calendar year. It'd be nice to know where our biggest energy drains are...I'm betting it's exactly like yours, though.

We invested in a wood burning furnace. Cost us about $1300 by the time we were done, but it paid for itself that first heating season. Even if we bought all our wood, we'd still be money ahead over using the heat strip. Warmer, too.

 

[FarmerChick]

Pinkfox that is true. I found when I kinda got slack I left lights on longer in rooms no one was in, or left a tv for a while when I went off to do something else. Those cents do add to that bill.

 

[FarmerChick]

2bz---I so am there with you about them saying 9% is a FAVOR or something.

see they blow your mind being sneaky. ASK for high, then settle for a bit less high and we feel good about it....yet in the end they got ya.

I tell ya I have been researching solar ways to get off grid and the prices are thru the roof. recoup time on costs are like 15-20 years. Heck I am darn near 50. Like I am going to commit to that type of recoup time. If younger and doing it all again I would do solar from the startup ya know. Just to go solar with an active system on the water heater is about $7K but with rebates and all that the price gets down to like $3K. With a recoup of like 5-6 years. (And of course by then the darn thing will break and it will cost a grand to fix and in the hole again, my kind of luck LOL)

 

[FarmerChick]

Marianne---you know about the dreaded heat strip. those things are horrifying. Once I saw it come on, that little red light like the devils one eye, , and I jumped up and put the thermostat lower just to get it off. Like I could try to fool the heat pump or something?? And worse, at night I tossed and turned just knowing that sucker was coming on every time I heard the heat kick on. Drove me nuts.

(I tell ya I got strange obsessions with these kind of things )


That heat strip is one reason I bought my propane fireplace. In those 2-3 months of very cold and that heat pump can't handle it, we use the propane fireplace. House is so toasty warm. Like you said, even the heat strip the house is cold. I know what you mean. We almost went wood like you but I didn't want ash work, or firewood work. I took the easy way out.



what kills me is this:

from the Mr. Electricity website:

Use a water heater timer on older heaters. A timer turns off your heater automatically when you go to work, then back on right before you come home, off after you go to bed, and on again right before you get up. They're available for both electric and gas models. But they don't save as much money as you'd expect, though. That's because a typical electric water heater only runs about three hours a day anyway, and modern energy-efficient water heaters run only 1.3 hours or so. Standby losses (how much heat the tank loses by just sitting there) aren't that great, especially for modern heaters. (In fact, if your heater was made after 1998, it's possibly not worth using a timer at all.) And even with a timer you'll still have standby losses as soon as you leave for work and after the tank shuts off for the night.

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so it is like, should I bother LOL I don't know.