hydro one

[Home Grown Poultry]

we were running 2 small infrared heaters set to 68○C but they were really only on when the wood stove was off... they are off now though. got propane and turned the furnace on since I couldnt get wood outta the bush... furnace works great. I think I can get to the bush now though... maybe IT better be frozen as its cold out! it wasnt yesterday though.

[Home Grown Poultry]

you could be very right there OC!

[Poultryprincess]

We have old 1870 farmhouse about 1500 sq ft.
NO furnace, we heat with 3 wood stoves.
1 Small freezer, 2 computers & normal appliances.
We try Hard to use washer & dryer during Low peak, not always possible.
Chicken coop with a few lights & garage
Birds only get heat lamps during extreme cold snaps ( like this weekend )

MY BILL
1,342 kWh used ~ 61 days
Winter ON peak $38.65
Winter MID peak $28.18
Winter OFF peak $74.78
Delivery $76.87
Other charges $47.06
Clean Energy B -$22.20

Total bill $243.41

( last Jan to March we used 1/3 more hydro, but I was using more heat lamps in chicken pen )

IF I was you, I would have another cigarette AND an alcoholic beverage!!!!!!!!!!!

[Home Grown Poultry]

hahahah well i got another smoke but no drinks for me.... im a quiter LOL Sober 3 n half years now. i drank more than a lot of people combined would in a lifetime.... with good reasons I quite cold turkey and never looked back or had any cravings... my problem wasnt necessarily the booze but rather people ticking me off while i was wasted... and well that temper would come out and it never ended well... if a case was opened it got emptied and the same for a bottle... I dont know how i survived but i did! thankfully!

and thats another thing... when i was a drinker how the heck did I afford to drink so much? our bills were ALWAYS paid and there was always food on the table. I never took from the family. i dont get it.

I have chickens now and other natural ways to relax.......

[SandyM]

Al, if we use the furnace because we ran out of wood, which we did last year, we were between $7-800/month for hydro. February last year came in at $825. But we have a really old furnace that we didn't plan on using. Sometimes you get caught with your pants down and run out of wood, but this year we aren't over $325 with the wood stove on 98% of the time. Sometimes the furnace will kick in over night if we reach 60, but that's just till Lou gets up @ 4ish and gets it going again. We have enough wood to get us through this winter and it definitely is not as cold. Lights are on longer this time of year and the coop lights are on each evening for the crew to get to bed and sorted on the roosts so I expect a slight increase, but still have a hard time justifying the $100+ a month increase as my primary oven that gets used is propane. Summer time we use the bbq 99% of the time, winter is in the ovens (one propane one electric).
Furnace is on the schedule to get dealt with but so is everything else around here that is aging. LOL.

I know Hydro will accommodate a payment plan that can extend for 6 months. But please get yourself qualified for a reduction in your energy bills and ask for it to be applied immediately and retroactive if they still allow that. It really will make a difference. You can also ask them to waive interest fees/late pay fees and if they don't you can report them to the ombudsmen because of a low income qualification.

Is your furnace electric? How old? Worth a wood stove installation? Do you have access to firewood on your land? Old farm house should have chimneys you can dip into. I think someone on here is an old furnace dude? Ross?

I hate for anyone to have these kinds of financial blows, I know it can cause a great deal of anxiety and stress. Please let me know if I can help in any way. Please. If I can help I always will!!!!

[Ontario Chick]

QR_BBPOST we were running 2 small infrared heaters set to 68○C but they were really only on when the wood stove was off... they are off now though. got propane and turned the furnace on since I couldnt get wood outta the bush... furnace works great. I think I can get to the bush now though... maybe IT better be frozen as its cold out! it wasnt yesterday though.

I am afraid the heaters are going to be your worst consumer of hydro.
I have watched a battery pack that can run a radio and a lamp and an incubator for hours, get sucked out by infra-red lamp in an hour or less.
The first year we lived here we thought we couldn't afford a load of wood (uncut logs $ 500) at the end of winter we realized we couldn't afford not to.
It's a constant struggle, but I am sure you will overcome. :)

[Home Grown Poultry]

thanks for the tips n ideas i really appreciate it guys! your all like my entented family!!! THANK YOU!

Sandy the furnace is a couple years old and very efficient.

Al

[Home Grown Poultry]

well we just held a family meeting and talked about all the different ways we could save energy, not just electricity but everything... we all came up with some great ideas and think going forward we will be fine.

our first bill was just an estimate and this bill was a correction of the first bill, adjusted and the payment from it applied to this one. now since we moved we didn't change much in our habits. we had brand new energy efficient samsung washer n dryer, came with the house and not ours... we bought the ones here from the restore and well they may have been cheap are not exactly new. so thats definitely a huge contributer, I have a new set sitting on my trailer thats less than 2 years old. dryer needs a part though and im not sure exactly what, gotta ask my buddy i got them from, I think its some sort of bushing... and the old washer will become my new plucker!!!

no more infra red heaters although not using the furnace and those instead probably evened out... but propane is much cheaper.

all our lights are 13 watts cfl's, 22 of them inside and out. cant get much better than that other than keeping them off.

our stove is withing 5 years old and should be fine but of course electric.

we run 2 fridges, both within 5 years old so shouldnt be to bad. one was supposed to be my egg fridge but it ended up in the kitchen beside the other one haha.

we only have 1 mini apt. sized deep freeze. we have 2 more med sized that are not here yet and are at Lizzies parents filled with our food from the old place... mostly produce.

the hot water heater was installed in 2007 so it should be a good one... but it is 3800 watts.... hot water is HOT and should be able to be turned down a bit.

furnace was installed in 2009 and has a very high rating of efficiency, was inspected last year.

our wood stove is ours.... its big and 3 years old... throws a tonne of heat as longs as we have wood and very efficient at heating the entire house. tommorow I am going to the bush and getting wood! and on the weekend... Yes Sandy i have access to a tonne of dead ash in the bush provided I can drive through the field with either my truck or my suped up lawn tractor. there is no lane way back there.

I want to thank all of you for everything.... I was ticked right off earlier and now im feeling much better.

have a great night all!

[WLLady]

i have 18 water heaters in the barn going when it's below 4C. and LED lights on in the barn for chickens/turkeys until 11pm, and in the layer coop until 11. we do ALL our washing, drying and dishwasher loads on off peak times. we have a woodstove with a blower (electric) on it. light with LEDs as much as we can in the house. Forced air backup on furnace. router and internet on all the time, printer on standby all the time, weather station. usually at least 2 incubators going. 2 freezers in the basement a fridge, beer fridge and our water pump is electric. hot water heater is also electric. there's just the 2 of us though, and we don't run lights all the time etc. i do cook, but stove is on the fritz so not sure what temp it is most of the time. our bill for the winter is roughly 350-400/month. in the summer its virtually nothing-delivery fees really. about 75$. but we bbq way more in the summer than use the stove and wash goes out on the line. but wet try to avoid on peak time as much as possible. i'll even switch over the laundry if/when i wake up in the middle of the night LOL

we had an awful time with the estimates, so we learned to read our own meter and keep track of our usage ourselves. saved our bacon more than once. when our meter fried getting hit by lightning they recorded the new meter wrong and we got a bill for more hydro use in one month that we had used in the 7 years since living here! we called them and said "um...no WAY IN HECK!" it was over 10,000.00! LOL. we explained that No, we didn't open a broiler barn operation with 16 barns.....lol. they were pretty good but it took a good 4 months to get that fixed. they had to dig up our old meter out of some garbage pile somewhere to prove we were right!

so we check them every step of the way....hope you can get it figured out! oh, you can get a device that you clip into the fuse panel that will tell you what you are using, and you can use it to test each of the lines in your house to tell you which line is the culprit...martin should be able to tell you more about that...

[windwalkingwolf]

My bill for Nov. 1st to December 31st was 574. I thought that was OK for 2 months, since we were using tons of hot water, lights on all the time etc. to get this place cleaned up. Bill for January is 433. $%#@&?+#@!!!!
To me that means the old fella (our tenant) in the granny flat is using electric heater even though he's been asked not to.
No clothes dryer here, no heated tape or anything like that plugged in. Propane furnace, we cook mostly on the wood stove so electric range is rarely used. Clothes always cold-washed , LED and CFL throughout. I carry a flashlight around at night rather than flicking lights on. Everything turned off through power bars to avoid phantom energy draw. So, still pretty much living the same as when we were off grid. Except much bigger monthly bill LOL. Its cold out now, so If it goes up again next month, I'll know for sure Jerry's got a heater on. Hydro One makes me spitting mad, I begrudge every cent I pay or have ever paid, especially when they are PAYING OTHER regions to take our excess rather than reducing rates. Price we pay for a convenience I guess, but it's a ridiculously high price. Our Quebec neighbours pay less than half of what we do. Infuriating.