I had an eye-rolling experience this morning listening to the local morning show on the radio. Well, iHeart radio that is.
The lead in was a lot of North Texans got a surprise in their gas (heating) bills this month. Well, no shit. It’s been cold. So sure enough, on comes a woman gobbling that her gas bill was nearly $290!.
Well, no shit. I was expecting a bigger number.
I’ve lived here 25 years. That is a very normal gas bill for a month with nights in the teens. I remember paying about that when I first got here and thought nothing of it. Houses down here aren’t really built for this kind of cold. And with good reason – it only shows up once a year, usually in late January or February. Some years, not at all. Some years, far worse.
Same thing happens in the heat of the summer. Electric bills soar. I’ve noticed my gas bill and electric bills amount changing places in the peak temps, heat vs. cold.
This was a big fat nothingburger story. Are we really that dumb these days?
The house I’m in has no gas at all. Last one didn’t either. Both have had heat pumps, which are generally perfectly adequate for the climate here, which for most of the year is very temperate. In my case, the electric goes up in the peak seasons, worse in winter. I think my bill this month will be $400 or so. It averages around $150, which isn’t bad considering that I work from home. Back in my last house, that number would be the same, split between gas and electric. With AC, that cost increases faster as you approach and exceed a twenty degree differential between inside and outside.
I made a back-o-the-napkin calculation in the summer that every three degrees was roughly an extra $100 a month. So if I put my thermostat at 78 all summer, my electric rarely tips $200. That seems like a high temp for AC, but consider that during those months it’s 100+ outside. So it feels cool inside, and I save bucks. In the winter, it’s not as bad, so I keep it at 72.
I’m old. I get cold. I can afford it.
FWIW, every house that I’ve owned had a set point. A temperature where it was most efficient to heat and cool. For example, the last house I owned, that temperature was 83. On the hottest day, with no ac and closed windows, the house stayed at 83. So cooling it to 78 during the day, dropping to 74 at night cost peanuts, relatively speaking.
The woman on the radio complaining sounded like the type that keeps the house super warm in the winter, so she shouldn’t have been surprised that when extreme cold hits, your house is more expensive to heat.
FFS. It was a month. One. It’s been no cooler than 45 degrees at night here since. If you can’t get that, get average billing and amortize the peaks over the year. That’s why it was created.
Inspected By Pat 