Utility Bills in NW Area? (Tucson, Oro Valley: HOA fees, condo, new home)

[Annilyna]

I will be moving to the Marana / Oro Valley area (basically right between) next month and I'm trying to estimate our monthly expenses for our new home.

I have heard that water can be expensive in the Tucson area, since they have to transport the water in, since there is no nearby water source. I'm also trying to anticipate the long, hot summer months of having to run the central A/C throughout the day.

My husband loves to blast the A/C here in Southern California where I consider the weather to be more moderate, so I'm very worried about our monthly costs. And I'm not even going to get into how long HIS showers are!

Home is single level, roughly 2200 sq/ft. Seems to be well insulated and is a newer home (less than 10 years). For now, it's just me and my husband (no kids).

Any ideas of what I can expect? I appreciate any input!

[Mike_]

Annilny, welcome. We are in Oro Valley and just moved here. It is just the 2 of us in a 1500 sqft house. We spent our first summer here so I can comment on our bills. We felt the electric and water were not at all bad:

Electric:
Well insulated house, throughout the day the sun hits 4- 5 windows. We always leave our window shades/blinds open for the dogs. Kept the thermostat set at 78 degrees. From July to Sept the bill was $200, this months was only $150 (was cooler so the windows are open at night and do not turn the AC on until 2 in the afternoon.

Water:
Again just the 2 of us. We have a small watering system to water the bushes but, was off during the monsoon season. Our water bill was about $40 - $50 per month (Seems higher than we expected).

Gas:
Has been $20 per month. We don't expect much of a change through the winter as we are from New England and prefer it cooler.

The only places we found differences from New England were:

Cooling costs are much cheaper than heating costs in New England
Food, this was a big change for us. There is less selection and the prices are much much higher. A good example is a container of coffee in New Hampshire (Folgers Special Roast) is $5.99 here is it $10.99 best price.

[Annilyna]

Thank you Mike! Very helpful info! I'm moving from a tiny condo, where our water bill is including in our (disgustingly high) HOA fees and during the worst of the summer months, the electric bill is $90, so looks like that will be the biggest shocker.

[Mike_]

Well, obviously the larger the home, lower the temperature setting, and the higher the outside temperature the higher the bill. Is 78 cool enough? It is for me but, Helena needs a fan in addition to the AC. Between the 2 she is fine. BTW, since she had been looking for work through (and still) the summer she was home all day whereas we may have left the temperature higher during the day when we were not home. Also, again we left our blinds open all day and the solar heating is an AC killer......but, we can't imaging having the blinds closed all day for either us or the dogs.....

[Jenmar1024]

We (myself, hubby and daughter) lived in the Continental Ranch area up to earlier this year. We rented a home that was about 1650sf and here is what we use to pay:

Electric: summer $250-290, winter about $80-90
- by far the most expensive for us, as I don't tolerate the heat very well and during the summer I would have it cracked down to about 72 and our dryer is electric.

Water: $40-50 a month throughout the year

Gas: $20-28 a month

We also had to pay for our trash pick up which ran about $45 every 3 months (iirc).

Good Luck and welcome to the area.