WTF! My gas bill just went up 6 times!

[Rod]

I don't have gas. The stuff scares me. Too many explosions and CO poisonings for my liking; especially with NH's dilapidated infrastructure. Oil is cheap this year. I heat my home and water with it. My water bill is consistently below $40 a month. I've lived on the West coast. You can have it. I'm more than happy to put up with the cold and snow.

Doc

But what do you pay a year in property taxes? I pay $6k/year for just under a 1/2 acre and 2700 sq ft house.

 

[AVB]

You can't judge all of Cali and all of everywhere else the same. There are parts of both that are ridiculously expensive and others really cheap. I'm in nowhere PA with 2500 Sqft on an acre and my tax is $5400. However, I bet your place cost over double what mine did so who is worse off? My cousins near DC drop about $12K a year in tax for 1/2 of an acre and 2800 sqft but their place is valued at almost a mil too. Even so the value to tax ratio is worse for me then it is them. Just depends, location, location, location.

 

[AVB]

Cheapest gasoline prices in the country are in Tulsa. It hit $1.40 last week.

Hard to say. I just moved from a 2nd story apartment insulated by being sandwiched in between the 1st and 3rd floors and located in the interior of the building...to a small 1 br house with less effective insulation. Hard to say what has increased due to higher rates or just the circumstances of the house being slightly larger and not as well insulated.

As far as gasoline prices...I just saw it was about $2.99 for 87 octane. That's still okay in my book as I remember it spiking around $4.50 or higher years ago.

 

[oke&coke]

I don't envy you guys about the property tax. I just cut a check for $1012 and I will be doing it again in six months. This is for 10000 sq feet of land and 1400 sq feet of home. Of course everything else is more expensive.

 

[ironpeddler]

The house I just dumped was off the Barnegat Bay (3,200sf) and it cost me over $600 a month to heat last Winter when we had that prolonged sub-zero weather...the house was 14yo. A normal Winter month was around $350-$425 with natural gas in a 2 zone system. To cool it in the Summer was almost the same amount in electricity costs...$400-$600 a month. I had a 600ft well that maybe cost me 30 bucks a month in electric to pump into the house, but cost me over $175 a month is purification costs....salt & filtering mediums....and for Jersey that's expensive for a well. Plus I still had sewer costs of $400 a quarter. Property taxes were around 8-9k a year which I thought was a bit high. While it may sound reasonable in comparison to you guys, to me it was getting too expensive based on the immediate past where double digit rate hikes were getting to be all too common every year.

You guys are getting whacked with NG costs...won't CA pump in some NG from fracking states? That amount of a percentage increase should almost boarder on illegal...where is the Federal Utilities Regulatory Commission in this case? I thought they were supposed to protect us from such occurrences?

As for gasoline prices, I just saw Costco at $1.45 a gallon for regular yesterday....regular gas stations are at $1.55 to $1.62. The market pundits are saying these prices could be around for a year (also based on crude oil futures)...and may go lower right up to June of this year.

 

[AVB]

I couldn't live in my place if I had to pay $600 a month for heat and another $400 for juice. I do about $1500 all winter for a 50 year old house. I don't have central air so my electricity is pretty constant at $100 a month unless I crank up the home theater more than normal. I hope the new place you moved into is A LOT more reasonable.

 

[flamchop]

If/when you don't get anywhere with the gasco, call every news outlet in your area, someone will likely do a story since this is affecting so many people, not just you. Local TV stations are your best bet, when you call AND email them, ask specifically for the investigative or consumer departments, if they have them. Once the word gets out, the company may buckle, almost all of them do when they're called out in the media for something like this. In the least, they will have to explain themselves. Meanwhile, be in contact with your local government reps, and beyond that, perhaps lawyers who can get together some sort of class action lawsuit, because if you are truly forced to use this gas company and there are no alternatives, everyone on the planet will take your side.

 

[ironpeddler]

I couldn't live in my place if I had to pay $600 a month for heat and another $400 for juice. I do about $1500 all winter for a 50 year old house. I don't have central air so my electricity is pretty constant at $100 a month unless I crank up the home theater more than normal. I hope the new place you moved into is A LOT more reasonable.

Yup...much less expensive. Much smaller too.

 

[Devil Doc]

Yup...much less expensive. Much smaller too.

It's not like you need cathedral ceilings.

Doc

 

[bfreebern]

Cheapest gasoline prices in the country are in Tulsa. It hit $1.40 last week.

$1.31 today.

 

[jfields]

I'm always looking to save when it comes to utilities.
We have a high efficiency wood stove we put in when we bought this house in 2011. I cut/split the wood myself because I actually enjoy the workout. So the cost is just the gas for the saw, and a new chain here and there.
Electric in the winter at its coldest is about $160.00 a month and $220.00 in the summer for a 3,300 sq ft home. That's with a 5,200 gph Koi Pond pump running 24/7...
Again, water is about $35.00 monthly. Guessing that's in part to we don't have to pay sewer having a septic system. No gas except for a small infrared wall propane heater in my cigar room to take the edge off in the really cold days as that's the farthest area in the house from the wood stove.

I can't fathom some of these utility cost you guys talk about! Holy shit!

And Rod........ Taxes for said 3,300 sq ft house on almost 2 acres is about $1,700.00 annually about 45 min outside DC (No, I don't live in BFE).....

 

[grateful1]

Blame Bush!

 

[ironpeddler]

Blame Bush!

But what if she shaves?

 

[vortex]

But what if she shaves?

We can always count on the man from the land of snatch and honey! One of these days we might try actual capitalism instead of the crony type. One can dream!

 

[ironpeddler]

It's not like you need cathedral ceilings.

Doc

WTF! How did you know I had 10ft ceilings in that house?

They were the worst...I had to run ceiling fans 24/7 in the Winter to get the heat from all the way up there, down to the floor where is was useful. What a waste of energy!

 

[{tpc}]

Some of those costs would give me a heart attack on the spot! Gas is back up to about $1.50 gal around here, but I did fill up for 1.30 gal once I think.

What is getting us now is grocery cost. Can't get grocerys without dropping at least $300 or so at a time, and that might only last a week and half. At least we get the points to use towards money off at the gas pump. Hard to believe that a year or so ago it might cost near $100 to fill up, now its less than $35!

 

[Backslide]

Bill - BTW, good luck getting through to SoCal gas. The hold time is "3 or more hours".

I'm a little late to the party, but this is my bread and butter. I transitioned from the semiconductor industry into the Natural Gas industry back in 2008. I can't really speak for the increase you've seen, but I'm 99.99999% sure that it was disclosed to you long before the rates went up. Maybe you forgot about it or glazed over the notification. It's also extremely unlikely that SoCal's Aliso Canyon leak would have any immediate impact on the end user's gas bill. With that said if you want a direct contact number for SoCal I'm more than happy to provide one to you

Jason

 

[Scap]

WTF! How did you know I had 10ft ceilings in that house?

They were the worst...I had to run ceiling fans 24/7 in the Winter to get the heat from all the way up there, down to the floor where is was useful. What a waste of energy!

See if you can increase the fan speed to get the discharge air temp down. If you can get your discharge air temp within 20-30 degreesF of the room temp, you'll eliminate that stratification in the high ceiling areas.

 

[Backslide]

I also wanted to add, I find it amazing that anyone with an IQ over 85 would purposely purchase a home within 4 miles of a storage facility. I wouldn't build a home within 1 mile of a high pressure gas transmission line either. Nothing lasts forever, everything is bound to fail at some point. Use common sense and protect yourself.

 

[grateful1]

Some of those costs would give me a heart attack on the spot! Gas is back up to about $1.50 gal around here, but I did fill up for 1.30 gal once I think.

What is getting us now is grocery cost. Can't get grocerys without dropping at least $300 or so at a time, and that might only last a week and half. At least we get the points to use towards money off at the gas pump. Hard to believe that a year or so ago it might cost near $100 to fill up, now its less than $35!

Blame Bush - again!