Average utility bills in the Austin area (Lubbock: home, utilities)

[10scoachrick]

Yep, you likely won't get that gas bill down much lower in terms of the total with fees. You could drop the actual gas usage a bit(but our 'big' house had gas heat, cooktop/oven, water heat(2), dryer and fireplace)...maybe 20 bucks or so. Interestingly, February 'could' be the first month you might need A/C It's not out of the question to have one or two days over 90 degrees! On the other hand, we could have days like today...maybe use the heat just to wake up; but need nothing for the rest of the day from the HVAC system.

Your electric bill WILL be much higher in the summer, especially if you are sleeping upstairs...sorry.

I highly recommend having ARS service your units twice a year...their service plan includes the visits and gets you a discount on any services you need. Assuming the HVAC is original to the house, you are entering a crucial period for maintenance and troubleshooting...you do NOT want to be without your A/C in July because of a catastrophic failure! Plenty of HVAC units out here have been replaced or overhauled in the 8-10 year time period....of course, a lot depends on the brand and service it has received over the years.

High in the upper 70s today...nothing above fifty until Thursday! Welcome to Texas!!!

[austin-steve]

Figure 10 cents per sqft per month, excluding cell phone and cable/internet. More for less efficient homes, less for newer. And also adjusted for your personal conservative/liberal use of the thermostat. It's just a rough starting point, and is an annual average (higher in summer, lower in Spring/Fall)

Steve

[A-Tex]

Natural gas prices are soaring right now due to the crazy cold weather. The price increased by 10% last Friday alone.

[CptnRn]

Originally Posted by austin-steve

Figure 10 cents per sqft per month, excluding cell phone and cable/internet. More for less efficient homes, less for newer. And also adjusted for your personal conservative/liberal use of the thermostat. It's just a rough starting point, and is an annual average (higher in summer, lower in Spring/Fall)

Steve

That would only be $240/month for my 2400 SF house. That does not come anywhere close to my actual average total utility bill $367/month. With a high efficiency HVAC and R-38 insulation. Even if I used no water at all it would not be that low.

If you calculate my average utility cost for these

Quote:
Totals for the year
Gas $420
Electricity $1,263
Water $1,259
Wastewater $988

And the City also adds several other items on the monthly bill such as:
Clean Community Service $6.66
Solid waste ..................$15.81
Drainage .......................$9.20
Street Service ................$7.80

it comes out to $367/month.

[CptnRn]

Originally Posted by COCUE

Thanks all. I went back to the bill and it does contain $10 initiation of service charge and $75 deposit so total of $85 is non-recurring? I didn't notice the deposit because Texas gas didn't mention the deposit when I was signing up for the service unlike Pedernales and CoA utilities. By the way, I never had to pay deposits before for utilities in all the states that I've lived in. Thankfully it's mostly refundable except the $50 joining fee for Pedernales.

But does the remainder of $100 sound right? We live in a 7 year old ~3,000 sq ft 2 story house. If not, any thoughts on how to lower it

The breakdown of the bill is as follows (rounded)
Customer charge $13
Delivery charge $12
Cost of gas $67 (usage 117 ccf)
Lots of itemized taxes and fees about $8

I missed this post earlier, it sounds far more reasonable.

[COCUE]

CptnRn - Yeah, thanks for the estimates. I'll be calling HVAC servicing co tomorrow to make sure everything is working as it should be. At current rate of $100/month for gas, no way we will total your $420 a year but on the other hand, our electric is lower than yours.. I know that it changes in the summer.

Rick - I will call ARS tomorrow to have them look at our systems.

Steve - thanks, will revisit this time next year to see how close we are to those numbers. curious to see

A-tex - do you know how long it takes for the price hike to make it to our bills?

[cBach]

Originally Posted by COCUE

Hi all

We are slowly settling down and looking to get a sense of our budget and spending. We are trying to especially understand how much on average we should budget for utilities. We are thinking $500 a month should be enough to include cell phone, landline, gas, electric, cable/internet, water/sewage/trash.

We know some of the bills but not the others which are Austin specific. We pay $95/month for our 2 cell phones with employer discount. $110 for u-verse cable/internet, $4 for ooma landline takes us $200. Wondering if the remaking $300 will cover the rest.

This past week, We received a few first bills
- bill for $55 for electric.our first proper bill. Is that high?
- bill for $185 for gas. This seems very high. Any ideas on how to optimize our heating. We have 2 HVAC units. We are not used to that. We turn off the one downstairs at night and keep the one upstairs at 70 degrees overnight. Our house is really cold and when we wake up in the morning, downstairs is usually freezing at 63 degrees or thereabouts. So we turn it on to about 68. Thinking of calling HVAC person to come service it. Not sure when last it was serviced.
- we haven't received any bill from CoA for water, sewage and trash

Thanks for any insights

Where are you from originally? It seems you may not be that familiar with how heating systems function most effectively.

Heat rises, so it's usually better to have the heat on the first floor and less on the second. I wouldn't recommend turning the heat off on the first floor overnight, the furnace is having to raise the temp 5 degrees each morning during the peak cold. Also, having the bottom floor off could possibly cause pipes to freeze at night when the weather is coldest.

Consider keeping bottom floor constant at 68, top floor off during the day and at 69 at night. I suspect your bill will be a little lower. Our HVAC person said the bottom floor should only be 1-2 degrees lower than the top floor or the uneven heating will cause bills to skyrocket.

[orngkat]

"Natural gas prices are soaring right now"
Why? Our most recent bill was 30% higher than previous two years for same time period. One would think with all of the natural gas development going on that the opposite would be true.

[centralaustinite]

Cold weather = increased demand

[Trainwreck20]

Short-term spike. Natural gas prices are still at or near historic lows; however, the increase in cheap natural gas has led to a mini-boom in industries requiring natural gas - almost all new power generation is natural gas units, there are some industries opening near the coast (i.e. voestalpine entrusts construction of the direct reduction plant in Texas to Siemens and Midrex - voestalpine), and the general economic expansion in the area is also causing existing users to increase NG use.

Prices are trending upward a bit and that will continue for a while, cold weather or not.

In contrast to using purely coke-based blast furnaces, the planned direct reduction plant will only use natural gas, which is much more environmentally friendly, as the reducing agent. The use of natural gas in the reduction process will help to significantly improve the carbon footprint of the voestalpine Group and will be an important step in the achievement of the Group’s ambitious internal energy efficiency and climate protection objectives. The price of natural gas in the USA is about one quarter of the price in Europe.