Over the weekend I received my gas bill and the bill was the lowest it’s ever been. $27.20. FREAKIN’ AWESOME if you ask me. The gas line is hooked up to four things in our home; the furnace, fireplace, water heater, and gas cooktop.
The first gas bill we received after moving in wasn’t too bad, but what I didn’t realize at the time was the bill was for only 11 days of service. We moved in at the end of September but didn’t get out first bill until around mid November. I remember paying the gas bill and thinking wow, I guess natural gas is more expensive than propane, oh well, I guess that’s high maintenance suburbia for you.
At our last house we had a propane tank instead of a natural gas line and we were not accustomed to getting both an electric bill and a gas bill because we only filled up our propane tank when it was low}. Not receiving a separate bill for gas service never crossed my mind until we got ours in the mail.
Yada yada yada, I think the people we bought the house from forgot to switch the name on the account over to us and paid our first bill. By the time they {the previous owners/gas company/whoever} figured that out, it was already the beginning of November.
So when we received our first full gas bill for nearly $300 I immediately flipped out and called the gas company thinking there was in error in our bill.
Basically, the customer service rep said the gas usage was in line with what the previous owners were using for the house last year during the same time period. I was shocked. $300 a month for gas? So I started lowering the thermostat s-l-o-w-l-y hoping the HH wouldn’t notice. But he did.
To make a long story short, it took a while to convince the HH we didn’t need to have the heat on full blast during the day while he was away at work since I like to walk around the house with a coat on like a weirdo.
In early January I upped the ante and turned off the pilot light for our gas fireplace and turned down the water heater BIG TIME.
From a $279 gas bill last November/December to just $27.20 for August/September. Holy moley people, that is a 90% difference!!! Talk about a HUGE SAVINGS. Granted, we had a really hot summer this year and that is probably a big part of the reason why our gas usage has been so low lately. But still. I’m in it to win it this winter. I don’t want to pay $279 a month for gas ever again, so if you have any suggestions on ways I can continue to keep my gas bill lower than last year, I’d really appreciate it.
What is your average gas bill these days?
And how much do you pay for heating during the winter months?
~Mavis
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Tammy says
That is amazing! I am the one who gets cold around here. We live where we have a solid 6 months of winter so heat is a big part of our spending. We have natural gas as well and it is combined with our electric bill. So…that being said we are on the budget plan and pay about $120-$140 a month year round for both gas and electric, that takes care of EVERYTHING in our house. We are a family of 6, so six showers (or baths) every day, laundry and cooking for 6 people. I don’t think that is terrible, we work pretty hard to keep it that low.
Karin C says
Good morning Mavis and princess Lucy. We have gas as well for our heat/hot water. We out in a programable thermostat I was amazed at what we saved by doing that. I live in the Interior of BC so we get a lot of snow and colder then you. I put the window film on our windows for the winter, the kind you shrink wrap. I close the vents and doors to the rooms we don’t use which has made a difference too. We have a two story house on concrete slab so our basement area is colder we put in a pellet stove and that heats up the concrete and helps keep it liveable for our son (18). I replaced the weather striping regularly on our doors . The biggest help besides the stove was the thermostat.
Melissa says
We have the same issue with the gas bill in our house. Astronomical in the winter, virtually non-existant in the summer. The stovetop/oven, dryer, hot water heater, and furnace are the only items that use natural gas in our house. We hang dry clothes whenever possible to reduce dryer usage and have found that wool dryer balls cut our drying time by about a third when we are using the dryer.
We’re a family of six, and my kids LOVE to take hot showers, so we too turned down the temp on the hot water heater. One of the biggest differences we found was putting plastic up on our single paned windows, and putting those strips on the bottoms of all our exterior doors to help reduce/stop drafts. We’ve caulked around windows and pipes as well as added another 5 inched of insulation to our attic. We also installed high/low vents in all three bedroom to help.
We live in a suburb of Chicago so we’re pretty used to the cold. My kids would still like me to keep the thermostat above 68 in the winter, but I refuse.
Mrs. Chow says
Looking at what you use it for, if this was your forever home (and it’s not), I would tell you to install an on demand hot water heater and a wood stove.
Mavis Butterfield says
Both those items are on my list for the next house. 🙂
athena says
This happens to us every year. It always seems to even out though, since we have always lived in a very warm area in the summer and moderately cold in the winter. Summer time our electric bill gets really high and the gas bill is super low. Winter time the electric bill is much lower and the gas bill is high. We end up always spending around the same each month between the two. the real test for you will be comparing the same time of the year.
This year we had a HUGE shock with the water bill. Previously we had irrigation to water our yard and garden and here we have to use city water. We had a $200 water bill the first month we had our sprinklers on! I made some changes to the watering schedule and am hoping it will be MUCH less this coming month.
Miriam says
Insulation. If your insulation is good in your walls, windows and roof, you won’t have to turn your ac/heater on as much. In the summer, open windows at night to cool down your house. In the winter, do some baking and then open your oven (with it off of course). This always makes my house so much warmer and gives me something delicious to eat. It works best with a smaller house, but I’m sure it will make a difference for you as well.
Kathleen says
You know the obvious stuff: insulate, prevent cold air infiltration at windows and doors. Open curtains when it is sunny, close them when it is dark (or cloudy).
Take another look at your gas furnace. We used to have a dual stage gas furnace with a programmable thermostat. At night we’d turn the temp down 7 degrees from the daytime temps, which was set at the exact temp that was comfortable if you were up and moving around. If you were sitting, then you needed a lap blanket. Then in the morning, it would kick back on and warm up the house. Except with a dual stage, if the thermostat can’t reach the desired temp in a short amount of time, it would kick on the second stage–and use more gas–a WHOLE lot more! Once I reprogrammed my thermostat to warm up in 2-3 degree steps (from 60 to 63 at 6:00 a.m., then from 63 to 66 at 6:30 a.m., and finally up to the desired temp of 68 at 7:00 a.m., the second stage of the furnace never kicked on. The following month, our gas bill was lower, despite it being colder outside.
Many heat pumps have the same style system. Once the difference between indoor temp and outdoor temp widens, the heat pump system simply can’t keep up and the auxiliary heat strips kick on. I try to prevent that from happening whenever possible, but sometimes, you just have to be warm!
sheila says
I’m not sure what year your house is, but take a home audit and seal up the house. If you were going to be there awhile, i’d say hire someone for a proper energy audit around $400, or you can do your research and do a diy version. Go around the house with a lit stick of incense, paying extra attention to doors and windows. The smoke will show you where air leaks are. We usually go around every fall and seal up doors/windows/etc. Take a look at your fireplace, especially the doors. Make sure the flue and doors are tight. You may need new seals. Fireplaces are huge energy drains.
Stacy T says
Our electricity and gas are one bill but we’re on a Budget saver plan where our bill is averaged over the course of the year which helps immensely in the winter when it’s cold balance with the summer where we barely use it.
Deborah says
We have propane, a 100 gallon tank, so we fill up about three times a year. So our gas bill averages out to about $50 a month. We have a gas fireplace, cook stove and water heater. There are three of us living here. We don’t use hot water for laundry, for some reason, I can’t get the hot water to go into my washer. Oh elk, at least we have cold water and a machine.
CathyB says
We live in Alaska, so we have cold winter for at least half the year. Last year we got an energy audit done and then we did all sorts of things to save energy. The items that made the most difference were sealing leaks (of course), adding more insulation around the foundation of the crawl space, and replacing the gas furnace and water heater. Both the furnace and water heater were 20 years old and so were at the end of their lifespan anyway. It is amazing how much quieter and more efficient the furnaces are now! It can make a huge difference. One thing that the furnace guy told us was that with the newer style of furnaces it actually costs more money to set your thermostat to significantly lower temps during part of the day. The furnace will use less energy keeping a relatively consistent temperature (if the rest of the house is efficient) then it uses by firing up and burning a lot to bring a significantly colder temperature up every day. I think that adjusting your thermostat saves money with the old style of furnaces, but I know that is not the case with many new styles.
Julie says
Just saw this yesterday – yippeee!
http://q13fox.com/2015/09/21/puget-sound-energy-natural-gas-rates-could-decrease/
On a side note, my parent drive cars fuel on compressed natural gas (CNG) and they fuel up at home for about $1.27 a gallon equivelent! Cheap!!
Gardenpat says
When we moved into our 100+ year old brick Victorian house (5300 sq ft) , there was no insulation at all and all 43 windows were original single pane. Needless to say, our gas bills were over the top the first few years. Since then, we have insulated the attic, replaced 15 of the windows and as we have replaced windows, we’ve insulated those same rooms with a “super insulation” that is only about 1/2″ thick but has an R-17 value. Major difference in those rooms (which were bedrooms and family room and 2 of our bathrooms)!
We put in programmable electric floor heating in the same 2 bathrooms which surprisingly cuts back on our gas heating- if your feet are warm in the morning, you don’t need to have the room as warm!
When our hot water heater needed to be replaced, we opted for a tankless hot water heater that uses natural gas. We were able to get a 30% tax credit on it and it has made a major difference in our gas useage!
We have three gas furnaces for the three sections of the house and replaced those several years ago with more efficient ones. We put in programmable thermostats and they go down when people leave for work in the morning, goes up when they return but goes back down at 10 pm. Anyone up later than that can just bundle up!
Each year our level pay amount goes down- last year it was $113/ month. Starting this year it is $103/month and we have some pretty cold winters here!
Cass says
Do they make electronic ignitions for gas furnaces/water heaters? Not having that pilot light lit all the time would save gas. (so would moving to FL. LOL)
Kristina says
We have gas for our water heater and to heat the house. Generally, we use the gas heat only in spring and fall. (We use wood heat in winter.) Our bill is always under $30!
Lori says
I have an older home that sits on a cement slab so it is always a little cooler. The front of my house gets direct sunlight all year long so in the winter months I make sure I open all of my blinds in the morning so the sun helps to keep the house warmer. I only keep the thermostat on 63 during the day since my kids and I are at work. Once I get home I do put the thermostat up to 66 – 68 for a few hours (if they are going to be out I don’t) close the blinds and then I will turn it back down to 63 about an hour before I head to bed. I also found that putting the outlet safety caps in helped with drafts.
Kristina says
You know, I just remembered something. When we first moved into our house, our natural gas bill was in the hundreds, too. Then we learned NONE of our ducts were attached to the vents in the house. Once we had them re-attached, our bill dropped to less than $30 a month. So you might check to see if all your ducts are properly attached to your house vents.