Really high gas bill this month- normal for a house this size?
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
cardamom
Member Offline
Member Offline
|
Hi,
We just bought and moved into a 2000 sq ft house and we use natural gas (provided by Washington "the worst utility provider in the world" Gas) for our oven/stove, hot water and heating. For the past few months (Oct, Nov) we've paid around $60 for a 27-30 day billing period. This month, Nov-Dec, however, our bill is a whopping $234!! We've 5x our usage! (We've gone from 40 ccf to 206 ccf /41 TH to 216 TH). What is a bit strange about all of this is (1) we've been out of town for some weekends and lowered the heat; (2) we had about 3 days of no heat (water in our gas line - long and painful tale) during this billing period! So what gives? I have to call tomorrow -but in my past experience, the call center for Washington Gas offers just awful customer service...I'd love to know what other folks with a house this same size are using (in ccf or TH) and paying? We can't compare to last year's usage as we were not in this house and the last owners had a separate account. Though, maybe I can ask for a historical breakdown based on the property address? And any advice on figuring out what is going on? I'm worried that given all our "gas line" problems, we may have a faulty line/meter. And, any tips on dealing with Washington Gas' call center? Thanks!! |
Anonymous
| normal |
Anonymous
| Have you read your meter to see if it matches what's on your bill? The electric company did that to me once, the guy just read the meter wrong and our electric bill was crazy. I just called and gave them the correct reading and they fixed it. |
Anonymous
| Also, they may have been doing estimated bills and then finally done an actual reading so that this bill is a "catch up" for past months. It should say somewhere on the bill I think. |
Anonymous
| We are facing a similar situation. I was shocked at first but Dh reminded me of two things: gas prices are driven by the market and it's been higher plus we are in winter residential rates now. Based on that, I think we are going to sign up for the budget billing that tries to spread your annual costs in 12 equal payments. Could mean we pay a bit more in the Summer months but it will be more evenly distributed. |
Anonymous
| Probably normal. Heat is by far the biggest has user. |
Anonymous
| When we sold our homes we had to make a utility page with amounts from the lowest to the highest for every year we lived there. But as someone says, natural gas is market driven. |
Anonymous
| Sounds about right. However why don't you ask for the historical average on your property. You can get it even if you didn't own. Second last month had an abnormally large number of billing days. |
Anonymous
| That's high. Ours was 115 for 2k sq ft house, heat is 71 day and night and we cook nightly. Call gas co. They may have not read the meter and just estimated the usage. This happened to us and we requested actual reads each month. Bills went down significantly. |
Anonymous
| normal |
Anonymous
| normal on non newer houses |
Anonymous
| That it cheap. We have had $350 on a 900 square foot house. Did some insulation that helped. |
Anonymous
| We have budget billing for our house which is set at $65 a month. So in the Spring, Summer and Fall when we are using very little gas, it makes up for the higher usage in Winter. It averages out at the end of the year. Much more painless this way. |
Anonymous
| It often takes more energy to bring your house back up to temp than to maintain - so if you were trying to reheat your house after the line problems on one of those really cold days, that could eat up a lot of gas. We also had more super cold days than are typical for December, so that could also add to the problem. You could also do an energy audit to find ways to make your home more efficent. That bill would be high for our slightly smaller house - but we've done a lot to make our 1960 house more efficent and have a newer furnace. |
Anonymous
| That seems about right, maybe even on the low end. You should always get utility bills as part of the home-buying process. There are small ways to help (turning the heat down a degree or 2), more insulation, recaulking windows, etc. |