I've never lived anywhere before that had annual utility bills. It's interesting. Also, it was a bit of a surprise. After taking possession of our new house, we paid for the year (pro-rated). Here's the breakdown:
- Garbage - $125.04
- Recycling - $31.08
- Water - $246.60
- Sewer - $313.20
Hydro (electricity) is billed every other month, so time will tell what we can expect there. |The source of heat for the house we bought is baseboard electric. It\s 100% efficient, but electric heat is pretty expensive. My cousin lives a few blocks from our house, with the same heating and they pay around $300/month. They are on an averaging program....so I'm expecting an expensive winter.
Do any of you have annual utilities? How to you manage it?
So are all these managed privately? Publicly?
ReplyDeleteAll of these are public for us. Water is monthly. There are no charges for rubbish, recycling etc!
At the moment my district doesn't have rubbish bins - we have to buy special rubbish bags for $2 each (no bag, no collection). However next year we will be moving toward bins so no more paying for rubbish bags.
They are all managed by the municipality. The recycling program is pretty new - they come every two weeks to pickup that bin, but garbage is picked up once a week. Bins make things so much easier!
DeleteOur trash and recycling are built into our property taxes. We get quarterly water bills and monthly gas and electric. Biggest money savers for us when it comes to utilities hasve been getting an energy audit (our state offers them for free), replacing all lights with LEDs, adding insulation, air sealing, adding aerators to sinks and using low flow showerheads and toilets.
ReplyDeleteThis graphic is a good place to look for ideas on saving energy: http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/energy-efficiency-pyramid
Those are some great tips! Unfortunatly energy audits are pretty costly in my neck of the woods, but we're starting to do things like replacing fixtures with LEDs and adding insulation.
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