Electric Bill?!? What?!?

Ours is kind of the opposite of many of yours - ~$60-$80 in the summer, $200-$300 in the winter. (We've run the AC probably five days this year so far, and probably wouldn't even have bothered putting it in if it weren't for the pygmy chams.) That's Michigan vs. CA for ya.
 
Oh god :( the $500 electric bill! This is really something they should tell you about before you move to Florida. I don't even have that many herps right now. It's just the heat + old AC unit in an old house that makes it add up.
 
Wow.. I am glad to hear that some people have the same issues with electric bills as we do.. earlier last year before we got into the quads we had panthers, jacksons, veileds and a mellers. We had them outside quite often since we live in Oceanside CA. They did really well and then last winter we put them inside and put their heating on them along with their UVB bulbs etc. Our bill went from the average $125 - $150 in one month to a $400 bill the next. I honestly thought that they had not included our payment from the prior month, I mean our electric bill doubled... I was amazed... needless to say we now breed our wonderful Quads so besides Lucy our female panther from Ryan, all of our other Chams like the cool temps. No more excessive heat now. Just lots of misters and foggers..

Michelle and Josh
 
My reef systems and aqua culture bin (800w of light, 700w of heaters, don't want to add up pump Wattage:eek: ) 1200sqft house, bill is $200~ with just 1 cham cage, bill went up bout $15-20 a month

we are kinda hippy and poor, so not much else in house using energy:D
we unplug everything not in use to keep bill this low in so cal

all kitchen appliances are electric too

no AC

been changing windows and slowly insulating
 
Ours average $500-$600 every 3 months (quaterly) most recent was $550 (changed provider) but the last for the same period last year (winter) was $840. Summer usually goes $700.

Thats 3 tv's, 3 puters, various game consoles, all the herp lights and tanks, hot water (round the clock) 2 fridges and two freezers, pool filter and air con, washing machine and dryer daily.
Winter heating is gas, but summer cooling is air con and fans.
 
Yea, for me if its not the electricity part....its the huge amounts of water that I dump on WC orders......and we run the A/C in the summer all day sometimes.......
 
FOR ME ITS THE ELECTRICITY THING>

I hope this makes everyone except the guy in the uk with the 860 euro or pounds bill. Thats a hard one to beat when you translate it to $$$


07/27/2009 63281 3516.00 31 113.42 $ 932.14
06/26/2009 59765 3545.00 29 122.24 $ 967.58
05/28/2009 56220 1381.00 30 46.03 $ 317.84
04/28/2009 54839 2353.00 33 71.3 $ 574.62
03/26/2009 52486 1963.00 29 67.69 $ 448.24
02/25/2009 50523 1816.00 29 62.62 $ 406.58
01/27/2009 48707 2029.00 32 63.41 $ 453.50
 
Ryan,

Holy Crap man.. we have seen your place and I honestly thought that you had it set up very well, the last thing I thought about was how much that must cost you... wow I guess you do have quite a bit of cages around your home when you include all of your rooms.. :eek: wow I think you just won the medal for the highest bill... geez you know that is rent for some people.. just can't get over that..

Michelle

FOR ME ITS THE ELECTRICITY THING>

I hope this makes everyone except the guy in the uk with the 860 euro or pounds bill. Thats a hard one to beat when you translate it to $$$


07/27/2009 63281 3516.00 31 113.42 $ 932.14
06/26/2009 59765 3545.00 29 122.24 $ 967.58
05/28/2009 56220 1381.00 30 46.03 $ 317.84
04/28/2009 54839 2353.00 33 71.3 $ 574.62
03/26/2009 52486 1963.00 29 67.69 $ 448.24
02/25/2009 50523 1816.00 29 62.62 $ 406.58
01/27/2009 48707 2029.00 32 63.41 $ 453.50
 
Joe,

You scored big.. did they happen to put a "cap" on that when you moved in? Do they have any idea how many reptiles you have? Wow, if I had that set up I would be running my AC at 70 every day with my windows open for fresh air and have all the chams that would fit in my place..

Michelle

My rental agreement stated "Utilities Included". SCORE! ;):cool:
 
My rental agreement stated "Utilities Included". SCORE! ;):cool:

SCORE xs2

pfft with chams....grow room!!:D

What? you need nice plants for the chams anyhow.

edit: For shame Ryan! Leave some juice for the rest of us. :p

Seriously man..me thinks it's time for a green house or a large shed. What happens is by adding all those lights/BTUs, your ac will reach a point where it just can't keep up. This will cause it to run 24/7 and drive that bill through the roof. Even if you are not at that point, your ac is still fighting to cool your house.

My last place had that problem with all my tanks. We even had to run the ac during winter.
 
Member of $500 club.......

Unfortunately I'm a member of the $500/month club. Partly due to reptile lighting and partly due to a big house. Also partly due to a husband that is too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. He seems to have no human thermal regulation in his body. It drives me crazy. I could personally only turn the air conditioning on for a week or so in the summer and the heat on for a couple of weeks in the winter. We have great natural ventilation where I live. There is always a breeze to be captured by windows. I haven't gotten our bill for our recent heat wave (over 100 degrees). It should be awful. I just got the water bill for the heat wave period. Almost $500 for water. It's usually $80 for water in the summer. All my landscape plants were croaking so I watered them every day. I don't care about the grass. I let that get brown to some degree. That can come back. Once plants fry they are dead. I still lost some stuff.
 
I actually rent a room from a buddy of mine who has been fascinated with my chams for quite a while. When I agreed to move in he was excited to have the chams coming. I did let him know... If there was any kind of noticable spike in the electric that I would be willing to work it out with him... But it is yet to become an issue.

Also, a little less than a month ago when it stopped getting so hot outside I moved ALL of the chams outside. I have the Quad, Rudis, and Carpet, all in a nice shaded area, and in the hottest part of the day, with the mister timer on, the ambient temp in the shaded cages stays around 73-75', and it drops to about 62 at night... Which is great... I thought keeping those low temps outdoors here would be a greater challenge, but with all the moisture I am giving them, it keeps the temps down. All of the chams have been thriving since they have been out there... Can't beat Natty Sun... Chams love it... and it is Free!:):cool:

~Joe
 
Wow! Glad I live in Indiana where the electricity is cheap. I have a 4000sq house which my husband keeps 66 degrees through out the summer (except for our reptile room which we bought a window a/c unit for so we can adjust the temp and keep it warmer than the rest of the house. The highest electric bill this summer has been $126. In the winter time last year our most expensive bill was $320. However, I pay for it in water, they just doubled the water rates this summer so that bill is now around $100+ a month (for 2 people...we have not water shortage here, must be greedy government again).
 
I just figured it out. I had to unplug everything and turn off all the breakers one by one.

Its not the Chams.


FREAKING LEOPARD GECKOS> !!!!!! I have a lot of them. and a few other types of geckos I use the rack system for.

On my Rack System I am using heat cable , and counted up the wattage. Its about 350 watts 24/7. That is crazy. I was able to verify by watching the wheel spin on the meeter. :D

Ties in to when I bought the rack system in begging of JUNE! I switched from using heat tape and heat mats.

I am putting them on a timer. I will be able to cut a ton of my wattage. That and changing to Halogen lamps for basking light. I should be able to drop my bill $400 easily. Over the next two months I will find out.

I will update the thread when I see what happens.
 
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