Bill Shock

Picture courtesy of here

Our gas meter was changed over recently and because of this we received an interim bill….and to be honest we were completely blown away by the cost of heating this house.

As you can see here, we have made a concerted effort not to use our ducted heating that much – ensuring that we either keep the temperature quite low or off during the day. Mainly because we have been burnt before when moving into a new house.

Well our interim bill showed that it is costing $8 per day to heat the house (or 545 MJ). This is more than some buildings use at one of the hospitals Mr B works at. Now this would be ok (not really) if our house is warm but its not!!

The first thing we did was get a gas plumber out to check all our gas appliances. We were pretty sure it was the heater. Turns out all our appliances are fine and yes, it is the gas heater BUT there’s nothing apparently wrong with said heater other than being inefficient obviously. Though there could be heat loss from our actual ducting.

By my calculations, if we had kept going as we were we would have been looking at a $600 gas bill (which to me has felt a bit like paying for the privilege to freeze my butt off LOL).

We are waiting on tenterhooks for our next gas bill (the following 40 days of our bill cycle) as we have turned down the heat even more. In the evenings we have continued to use our rugs and blankies if we are sitting in the lounge and as a super cold kinda gal, I now sit in a sleeping bag and am toasty warm as I crochet or read.

Now in this instance, we are lucky as we can pay said bill when it arrives. But I read in the paper today that not everyone is so lucky. And with our provider increasing the price of gas as of 1 July, I’m sure it’s going to become a more regular occurrence for some.

In the meantime, Mr B and I have spent many weekends doing yet more gap proofing (I so thought I’d never have to see another tube of no more gaps after our efforts when renovating) and are intending to put in underfloor insulation which we have used with great success at previous houses. Finally on my agenda this week is to investigate blow in insulation for our walls!!

On his work trip to Adelaide last week, Mr B also managed to pick up the rest of our solar panels, so our solar tracker should be in action soon enough in all it’s glory. This will mean we will move to electric heating as we can obviously generate power and offset the cost until we are able to put in a wood heater (but that wont be till next year).