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Tracking Utilities costs

August 3rd, 2009 at 12:18 am

With my recent moved into to a townhouse in the city from a house in the mountain, utilities expenses are very different.

The house runs on two wood burning fireplaces with no heater or a/c. Kitchen appliance, stovetop and shower runs on propane gas and the remainder was electricity. Our huge yard was often watered and plants maintained which was another expense. Propane in that area is significantly more expensive than natural gas and natural gas was not accessible in that area.

The Townhouse runs on both natural gas and electricity. We have a central heating system with air conditioning. There is no yard but we have a nice patio and a good size balcony. We dug up some of our favorite plants and potted them for our new place.

I expected for our PG&E bill to be much higher now than before but then again we will not have any crazy sky high propane bills. Unfortunately, the first month here at our new place, we had over used the electricity due to a faulty laundry dryer timer. The first time we used it, the machine ran all night long after discovering it never turned itself off in the morning. This happened two more times later due to forgetfulness. Thank goodness hubby replaced a new working timer in the dryer.

It is still too early to tell what our average bill will be for budgeting purpose but at least we tracking it.