# Anyone have any novel theories on why my utility bills are so high? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 26, 2019, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528 "2019-05-26T00:44:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![nate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nate/32/13085_2.png) [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2019, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/21 "2019-05-26T19:44:57Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > I’m not quite following the troubleshooting you’ve done so far. You said when the water heater and HVAC are off you’re using 1-3 kW. That’s a lot. Since you have a clamp-on meter, why can’t you track down what’s using that power? You said you did that and “nothing crazy was found”. I don’t understand what that means. Some circuit is drawing that power; surely you can’t mean that every circuit in the house is idle but your house is still drawing power? You should be able to isolate the circuit that’s drawing power (although there may be more than one), and then isolate which device(s) on that circuit are the culprit(s) by turning off devices one by one. I say 1 - 3 kW average after accounting for the water heater and the AC. So averaging out the use of the oven, fridge, dishwasher, dryer, and everything else over a span of a week or shows that I’m using 1 - 3 kW at any point in time. That seems crazy to me. But when I’ve checked individual circuits, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary, meaning I can’t find anything constantly drawing power that wasn’t expected. My wife runs the dryer probably around 2 hrs or so per day. We run the dishwasher w/ heated drying once a day. Is that extreme? ---
**Author:** ![nate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nate/32/13085_2.png) [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2019, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/22 "2019-05-26T19:54:35Z")
> [@DorkVader](#): > > A slab house huh? That’s too bad, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that wasn’t more trouble than it’s worth. > > Does your water main enter the house through a wall or does it run under the slab to come up from below? > > Frinstance, my water meter is next to my deiveway, on the side away from the house. Fucking moron builders did this to every house in the subdivision. So everyone’s water main from the meter to the house runs across and nearly the length of the driveway and garage. > > Anyway, if your main goes under the slab, well, my sympathies Yeah, most houses around here are built on slabs. I don’t know if my water plumbing is IN the slab or underneath. I’d bet it is IN the slab. All I could see when I fixed the main inlet leak is the pipe going into the cinder blocks that are placed on the footing, but I don’t know how thick the slab is so I don’t know whether the pipes go into earth or slab on the other side of the cinder blocks. My water meter is also next to the driveway on the side away from the house. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2019, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/23 "2019-05-26T22:34:04Z")
> [@nate](#): > > My wife runs the dryer probably around 2 hrs or so per day. We run the dishwasher w/ heated drying once a day. Is that extreme? Unless you’re running an orphanage or a boarding house, I’d say yes. 😉 Are these full loads? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2019, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/24 "2019-05-26T23:02:17Z")
Are you staying up all night with the lights on blasting the air conditioner while you read novels? ---
**Author:** ![whitetho](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whitetho/32/1059_2.png) [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2019, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/25 "2019-05-26T23:03:43Z")
In the category of novel reasons, I once read a (true, I believe) story about a journalist posted to Italy who wondered why his apartment electric bill was so high. One night he researched the issue by removing one electric fuse for his apartment at a time. It turned out that when he removed the last one, the street lights went out. ---
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/26 "2019-05-27T02:03:08Z")
Your utility company may be able to help you investigate the cause. They routinely send us postcards offering a free energy analysis. The one suggestion that they made is to switch to LED lights, and they even sent us free and discounted LED lights of all types. I actually think it’s made a difference because our energy costs are trending down. Also, do you have natural gas or electric heat? This makes a huge difference. The energy bill on my main home, which has a natural gas heater, dryer and oven and electric stove top and a/c, is quite reasonable, $285/mo for a 5200 sf home. My water bill is ~$30 month. 3 adults live in the home and we keep the heat at 67 degrees and the a/c at 69. Compare this to our lake house, which we use from Friday night to Sunday afternoon 2 to 3 weekends a month. There is no natural gas, so we have all electric appliances and heater/a/c. For that 1700 sf home, we pay $100/month to keep it at 50 degrees F when we aren’t there and 67 degrees when we are. In the summer, we set the ac to 70 degrees when we are there, and do not run it all all when we aren’t. I can’t imagine how expensive it’d be if we were there all week year round. My water bill there is minimum of $20. My novel idea is that your neighbors are hooked up to your utilities. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/27 "2019-05-27T04:24:23Z")
> [@nate](#): > > My wife runs the dryer probably around 2 hrs or so per day. We run the dishwasher w/ heated drying once a day. Is that extreme? Not if you have six-month-old sextuplets. How are you possibly doing two hours of laundry a day? Are you washing people’s linens as your side hustle? ---
**Author:** ![pabstist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e99b99/32.png) [@pabstist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pabstist)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/28 "2019-05-27T05:03:38Z")
Once I rented a trailer on somebody’s land, another person rented one too. Turns out that when the “farm light” in the field finally died, the other persons electric bill went way down. And the reason the landlord didn’t want us to close our account with the water department when we moved, was because he had a faucet in his horse barn tapped into our plumbing. Neither one one of us tenants knew about what the scumbag landlord was doing, total fraud and theft. ---
**Author:** ![nate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nate/32/13085_2.png) [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/29 "2019-05-27T05:07:47Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Not if you have six-month-old sextuplets. How are you possibly doing two hours of laundry a day? Are you washing people’s linens as your side hustle? > [@running\_coach](#): > > Unless you’re running an orphanage or a boarding house, I’d say yes. 😉 > > Are these full loads? Huh… I’ve never given it much thought as I don’t do the laundry. My wife does a load or two a day and she’ll dry the clothes after the wash for about 45-60 minutes and then later on when she has time to fold/hang the clothes she’ll turn it on for a while to de-wrinkle. I don’t go through much clothes, but I think she tries on like 3 or 4 outfits everyday and I think she has good intentions on just putting the unused clothes back up, but she might just add them in to the dirty clothes. Plus, my kids wet the bed just about every night, so that is another daily load. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/30 "2019-05-27T05:10:16Z")
Are you mining bitcoins in your back room? ---
**Author:** ![nate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nate/32/13085_2.png) [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/31 "2019-05-27T05:19:04Z")
> [@PunditLisa](#): > > Your utility company may be able to help you investigate the cause. They routinely send us postcards offering a free energy analysis. The one suggestion that they made is to switch to LED lights, and they even sent us free and discounted LED lights of all types. I actually think it’s made a difference because our energy costs are trending down. > > Also, do you have natural gas or electric heat? This makes a huge difference. > > The energy bill on my main home, which has a natural gas heater, dryer and oven and electric stove top and a/c, is quite reasonable, $285/mo for a 5200 sf home. My water bill is ~$30 month. 3 adults live in the home and we keep the heat at 67 degrees and the a/c at 69. > > Compare this to our lake house, which we use from Friday night to Sunday afternoon 2 to 3 weekends a month. There is no natural gas, so we have all electric appliances and heater/a/c. For that 1700 sf home, we pay $100/month to keep it at 50 degrees F when we aren’t there and 67 degrees when we are. In the summer, we set the ac to 70 degrees when we are there, and do not run it all all when we aren’t. I can’t imagine how expensive it’d be if we were there all week year round. > > My water bill there is minimum of $20. > > My novel idea is that your neighbors are hooked up to your utilities. My utility company does have audits. They are not free but not crazy expensive. I tried to get one scheduled, but they don’t make it easy and after a few rounds of phone tag I just stopped pursuing it. My home is around 1900 sq ft and my AC is set at 80, but we adjust it to 74 if we get too hot during the day (70 @ night). Every month when I get the bill, I freak out, investigate/research and just reach the conclusion that we do indeed just use that much energy and water (I have natural gas that runs a furnace, but my bill still remains high during the cold months too just from the electricity usage). I just don’t know what we are doing that is so different than anyone else. Or maybe something is wrong but I haven’t been able to spot it after years of searching. ---
**Author:** ![nate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nate/32/13085_2.png) [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/32 "2019-05-27T05:27:45Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Are you mining bitcoins in your back room? Just to vent, I DID mine a bitcoin back in 2011, back when I would see articles about it on slashdot. But I upgraded the HD it was stored on to an SSD sometime later and chunked the old HD. A bitcoin was pretty worthless back then so I didn’t give it a second thought.:smack: ---
**Author:** ![HeiLo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c77e96/32.png) [@HeiLo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeiLo)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/33 "2019-05-27T10:50:18Z")
OP, since you asked for some novel ideas: -You have a huge flood light/electric space heater/radio transmitter in the basement that you forgot to turn off a decade ago. -Your kids have reactivated your mining rig. -Some malware has turned your entire computing power into a mining rig. -Your neighbour is stealing your electricity. However, I think it’s none of the above. The “novel” idea I would suggest to you is more work and less interesting: > [@nate](#): > > Yeah I know 10 SEER is relatively inefficient, and if I knew it was going to be an indestructible beast that would last over 15 years, I would have replaced it long ago.[…] (I realize a more efficient unit would have paid for itself by now, but hindsight is 20/20). It seems to me that your hindsight is not quite at a 100% yet - if you replaced the unit now, it would start paying for itself now. Unless your finances don’t allow for a replacement, I don’t see the logic in your thinking > [@nate](#): > > I have a Aeon smart power/energy clamps that, through a rube-goldberg connections of smart hubs and scripts and google sheets, I can get data and plot/filter it however I like, but it would be a lot less trouble to have a system specifically built for home energy monitoring. > [@nate](#): > > My wife runs the dryer probably around 2 hrs or so per day. We run the dishwasher w/ heated drying once a day. Is that extreme? You already have all the tools to figure out exactly how much energy every run of your dryer, washing machine, dishwasher etc. uses. Why not do that, add up the amounts (don’t forget to meter HVAC and water heater) and see if the sum is far off from what your bill says? > [@nate](#): > > Every month when I get the bill, I freak out, investigate/research and just reach the conclusion that we do indeed just use that much energy and water. I’d suggest that you stop freaking monthly, look rationally at the facts once and then make the changes to your lifestyle that you can afford. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2019, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/34 "2019-05-28T23:17:36Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > I’m not quite following the troubleshooting you’ve done so far. You said when the water heater and HVAC are off you’re using 1-3 kW. That’s a lot. Yeah, let’s go back to this. You can’t just ignore this because an average of 2kWh usage is fully half of your monthly usage. My house’s total monthly electric usage is about 400kWh. Less than 1/6th of yours. Now: we have gas heat, a fairly small home, and we rarely run the AC, but it sounds like your usage is 2-6 times as much as mine even when you’re not using heat or AC! So where is it all going? This is a very straightforward problem to solve. Make a spreadsheet with all your electrical devices. See how much each one draws. Start measuring how much you use each one and see where it goes. One thing that people mostly haven’t mentioned yet is lighting. A few years ago (in a different house) we did an energy audit and found that more than half our electricity was going to lighting. Our living room/dining room had recessed can lights, and there were 14 of them, 8 controlled by one switch and 6 by another. And since it was the main socializing/relaxing room in a small house, they were often on (it was a shared house. There was usually someone in that room 14+ hours a day, and the natural lighting wasn’t great, so they were on even during the day). And each one of them had a 60 watt bulb. That’s nearly a kW in lighting when they were all on. LEDs and CFLs can pay for themselves real quick in rooms with lots of bulbs or that see a lot of use. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/35 "2019-05-29T01:44:57Z")
> [@HeiLo](#): > > \ -Your neighbour is stealing your electricity. \ Some years back, the area I grew up in received an extension of the light-rail line from the big city just north of us. A few years later, the local newspaper ran an item about a light-rail technician who came out to check on a transformer/electrical sub-station somewhere along the line. It struck him funny that he noticed a standard grounded extension cord plugged into the side of said T/ES-S. He trailed the buried extension cord some 800 feet to a neighborhood house where the occupant was powering his few appliances. Hilarity ensued. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/36 "2019-05-29T01:54:38Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > He trailed the buried extension cord some 800 feet to a neighborhood house where the occupant was powering his few appliances. Hilarity ensued. In the other direction, a business owner in Northern Kentucky wondered WTF all the meters on his bill were powering, and it it turned out he was paying for [all the lights on a major bridge](https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/local/covington/2018/04/30/man-finds-out-he-pays-ohio-river-bridges-electric-bill/565627002/). ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/37 "2019-05-29T01:56:50Z")
^ Holy crap, Batman! ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/38 "2019-05-29T02:54:20Z")
ISTR someone here discovering (the hard way) that the house he had lived in for years had a sidewalk heater. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/39 "2019-05-29T17:31:11Z")
Sometimes the meter goes bad. Check to see if you power company will do a test on it. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528/40 "2019-05-29T17:46:02Z")
We discovered that in the house I used to live, the downstairs bathroom, in a questionably built extension added by the previous owner, was actually attached to the water main from next door, rather than the one attached to the rest of the house. The connection was flat rate rather than metered in that case though, possibly why the neighbours knew nothing about it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-any-novel-theories-on-why-my-utility-bills-are-so-high/834528.md?page=3)