Utilities Rates, Etc. for Our First Place (Portland: apartments, rental)

[Jamminredheaded]

My fiance and I plan on moving to the Portland area once we complete some certifications in the automotive industry, hopefully within the next year or two. We hope to be Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) certified in one or two areas (hopefully more) and complete coursework to acquire more once we're settled. We also plan on attending a community college (Mt. Hood or PCC), working at an automotive dealership and renting an apartment with about 900 sq.ft. (2bd, 1 bth -minimum) with access to public transportation.

I've been doing as much homework as I can in terms of where to live, how to keep costs down, what income we need to stay comfortable and above the poverty level, etc. but am having a monumental amount of difficulty determining what utilities I need to account for and their costs, especially since this will be the first time we've lived on our own. I've been able to find information about cable, phone, internet but the cost of the basics I'm still trying to figure out. A little help pricing out the following would be helpful and greatly appreciated:

-Electricity: expected charge per unit; average monthly cost
-Water: expected charge per unit; average monthly cost
-Sewer: expected charge per unit; average monthly cost
-Trash pickup: expected charge per unit; average monthly cost
-Gas: expected charge per unit; average monthly cost

Some places list a few of these as being included in the rent but knowing the values of each of these utilities helps me to determine what's a deal and what isn't.

It would also be very helpful to know how most apartments utilize gas because many of them use electric heating and electric ranges (presumably read as "cooktops," though I'm not sure whether a "range" is just that or cooktop + oven). Do the ovens utilize gas? The dryer in a washer-dryer unit? The water heater?

Thanks in advance!

[akamer]

My husband and I are moving to the Portland area in August! Can't wait!! We are from the Midwest and the prices are high here for utilities so I have been researching all of that and there are some places online that you can go to get all that information.. Here are some websites for you to look at..
portland general electric https://es.portlandgeneral.com/ (broken link)
pacific power www.pacificpower.net
portland water bureau www.portlandonline.com/water
waste management of portland www.wmnorthwest.com/portland/index.html
hope that helps you out
I have noticed though that alot of the apartments offer water / garbage / sewer in there rent.. Which is really a good deal... Best of luck!!!

[PNW-type-gal]

The main thing is not what the individual rates are but how efficient the building is. An old building (or, heck a 70s or 80s building) with thin walls, no insulation, single pane windows - your winter bill gas/electric will be high, even in a small place. Especially if you've been living somewhere hot and try to keep the apartment 75 degrees during the winter.

[Jamminredheaded]

Akamer, I've already visited the utilities websites and they unfortunately do not state their rates.

PNW, you make a good point about the efficiency of the property -it is something I had not given much thought to- but as stated in my initial post, I'm looking to know the rates to know how to compare the rent differences. A place that includes utilities and rents at $925/mo. may not be the better deal compared to a place at $775/mo. with no utilities included given that the apartments have identical layout, square footage, amenities, etc.

As for winter, our plan for the winter months is to bundle up, use space heaters, personal heating devices such as electric blankets/mattress pads and maybe a dehumidifier to help keep mold at bay though I'm already pretty good at keeping it in check where I am now.

[PNW-type-gal]

Electric space heaters are not a great idea - most of them are incredibly inefficient. Try to find an apartment with a gas furnace or heat pump.

A dehumidifier is not a great idea in the winter, either, if the apartment has forced air heating. It'll already be dry and drying it further won't help. When our son was small we had to put a humidifier in his room in the winter. The only interior mold issues we ever had were in a crawl space in our first rental house, which had a water leak problem, and sometimes in the winter at the base of the single pane uninsulated aluminum windows, where condensation would collect in the track - especially in the corners.

The big trick is that things don't dry out as fast - when you take a shower, you MUST hang the towel to dry without a fold, and when you come inside in wet clothing, they have to be set out to dry right away.

[Jamminredheaded]

Unfortunately most of the places that're affordable to my fiance and I use electric heating systems.

As for space heaters being inefficient, since they're sources of radiant heat, they actually convey heat more efficiently than hot air. What's more, heating a small space as needed is cheaper than heating a whole apartment. (Click here for energy saving tips regarding heating.)

My reasoning for the dehumidifier goes beyond mold control -it can be used in the summer too and is logistically friendlier in terms of relocation as needed, since they're normally on casters, compared to an A/C unit. (We tolerate dry heat better than humid heat.) Though we wish for the contrary to be true, most places in our price range do not have central air conditioning or even window units which is why we are considering this dual-purpose item.

[Wicked Felina]

Jammin...something to consider here, PGE (Portland General Electric) is anticipating a 14% +/- increase in rates this year. I didn't catch it all, just heard it on the news.

Be wary of less expensive apartments where no utilities are offered in the rental price. Actually, I have never seen one where, at minimum, water/sewer and garbage/recycling are not included.

Will you have interenet, a home phone (as opposed to only using your cells), cable tv? Those "bundled" services alone will be increased to close to $200 using Comcast in the Portland area this year.

It probably is safe to consider about $300+ for utilities, for an apartment - not a house. That is not including water/sewer and garbage collection.

Hopefully, you may be able to find a well-built place (not a large complex, of course) which could minimize your costs overall.

You'd get a better deal, and safer neighborhood, if you relocated out near MHCC, imo.

Lots of luck to you, and akamer!

[PNW-type-gal]

While it's true that electric space heaters turn a kilowatt into heat pretty efficiently, they don't make great room heaters. They make reasonable very small space "spot" heaters, leaving you with a lot of hot and cold spaces and, depending on your insulation, a lot of drafts. (Although central furnaces can do a similar thing.) It may well be that the upper cost end of the electric space heaters work well, but the ones I had in my office were noisy and took a lot of fiddling - even with a thermostat, they tended to overshoot badly.

We had A/C when we lived in Portland only because my allergies were so bad I couldn't open the windows in the early spring. Otherwise there was the equivalent of maybe 3-4 weeks a year that we would have used the A/C. (Again, depending on the insulation.) It almost always cools down at night.

Our current house has floor radiant (hydronic) heat mostly powered by solar thermal with a small boiler backup and I love it.

[Wicked Felina]

Originally Posted by PNW-type-gal

While it's true that electric space heaters turn a kilowatt into heat pretty efficiently, they don't make great room heaters. They make reasonable very small space "spot" heaters, leaving you with a lot of hot and cold spaces and, depending on your insulation, a lot of drafts. (Although central furnaces can do a similar thing.) It may well be that the upper cost end of the electric space heaters work well, but the ones I had in my office were noisy and took a lot of fiddling - even with a thermostat, they tended to overshoot badly.

We had A/C when we lived in Portland only because my allergies were so bad I couldn't open the windows in the early spring. Otherwise there was the equivalent of maybe 3-4 weeks a year that we would have used the A/C. (Again, depending on the insulation.) It almost always cools down at night.

Our current house has floor radiant (hydronic) heat mostly powered by solar thermal with a small boiler backup and I love it.

Is this the correct thread to ask you these ?s...I don't know. Did you build your house PNW-gal? Is there another thread where you've discussed all of this, your solar thermal and hydronic heating? It's fascinating, isn't it???

[Leisesturm]

Originally Posted by Jamminredheaded

Unfortunately most of the places that're affordable to my fiance and I use electric heating systems.

Aside from electric heat meaning electric stove as well, electricity in Portland has some advantages. Compared to the East where reliance is on coal for electric the West uses hydro-electric. Cleaner and cheaper for the most part. Our first months utilities are $66 (bi-monthly) for water/sewer of which $15 is start up fee, 21, sewer, 11, sewer and 10 actual water usage. Gas was $3.00. There is a gas fireplace which was running for a couple of weeks until I figured out how to turn off the pilot. Electric was $46.00. Not bad considering stove is electric as well as dryer. Garbage is $20.00/mo for a 48 gallon garbage and any size recycling container (we use a 48 gal. recycle). ~ $100/mo for 3BR all electric house paying for everything: water/sewer; electric; gas and garbage. HTH.

H