What is your utility bill? (Kansas City: new home, live in, cost)

[Roccaluma]

My present neighborhood is wonderful except for the gasoline thieves. My other neighborhood had prostitutes, one guy 50 yards down the street spent all day sitting in a chair next to the street, did he just like too sit there or was he selling drugs? But I had no problems in two years, and i walked to many places in that neighborhood. So how bad can a white run down place be?

[quesera]

It doesn't matter, one's ethnicity. There are crappy houses in every neighborhood, in every town.

Like another poster mentioned, the cost of utilities depends on the number of people living in the house, too. I mentioned on the previous page what utilities run for our household. I didn't mention we are a family of five and I run a daycare out of my home, so the costs rise exponentially. A small house, in any city/town in Kansas, would be fairly inexpensive to operate with only one person living there. You just need to find the city/town, then the house.

[cp1969]

Our house is all-electric (two air-to-air heat pumps), ~3400 sq ft. 400 amp service to house; 100 amp service to barn.

Electric bill (heat/cool plus lights) has never exceeded $300. Usually in the $150 or less range. That will change drastically if Cap'n Trade becomes reality.
Trash runs $13.
Water about $33, no sewer because we have a septic system.
Phone (including internet) is about $60.

[GraniteStater]

Originally Posted by cp1969

Our house is all-electric (two air-to-air heat pumps), ~3400 sq ft. 400 amp service to house; 100 amp service to barn.

Electric bill (heat/cool plus lights) has never exceeded $300. Usually in the $150 or less range. That will change drastically if Cap'n Trade becomes reality.
Trash runs $13.
Water about $33, no sewer because we have a septic system.
Phone (including internet) is about $60.

I don't support all aspects of cap and trade, but the Northeast has already had a version of cap and trade (RGGI) and it has worked fairly well. It is basically free market environmental standards to incentivize the big utilities to pollute less. The inherent problem I still have with cap and trade is that it still grandfathers in the largest and most polluting coal plants. If we really want to tackle our electricity problems we should go full bore on energy efficiency programs along with a wider array of tax credits for businesses and consumers. We also have massive losses and electricity through the transmission problems. We need to place more emphasis on the decentralization of the grid so that consumers can have a choice about where their electricity comes from. Net metering is a good start for residential consumers who could install solar or wind and sell back surplus electricity to the utility. I think raising the RPS on the state level could also spur job growth and economic development in the rural Plains counties through wind energy projects. We still need federal investment in constructing key transmission lines to spur growth in the wind energy arena for particular areas that are underserved. This is an investment that I think is of a solid national security imperative.
Oh, and you have "cheap" electricity because you live so close to many polluting coal plants. In fact, the Kansas City area has at least 12 coal units that produce substantial amounts of pollution ranging from: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, radiation, and carbon dioxide. Electricity is cheap because the externalized health and environmental costs are not factored in. The big publically traded utility companies make sizable profits for the shareholders at the expense of public health. This is why I strongly support cooperative utilities that are not publically traded, but member owned. It is a DFL idea I strongly agree with, and it services a population that is more decentralized. The large utilities with the centralized network of big fossil fuel stations mostly looks out for the shareholders and not the ordinary residents.

[cp1969]

I don't support any aspect of Cap and Trade.

I see it as making zero difference in the environment but creating yet another massive trading system for Wall Street to manage, with consumers unnecessarily spending more for the same products they used to receive at a much lower price. Goldman Sachs is very much in support of Cap and Trade and if GS supports it, I am against it. GS is licking their chops to start trading carbon allocations, now that credit default swaps have fallen out of favor.

[GraniteStater]

Originally Posted by cp1969

I don't support any aspect of Cap and Trade.

I see it as making zero difference in the environment but creating yet another massive trading system for Wall Street to manage, with consumers unnecessarily spending more for the same products they used to receive at a much lower price. Goldman Sachs is very much in support of Cap and Trade and if GS supports it, I am against it. GS is licking their chops to start trading carbon allocations, now that credit default swaps have fallen out of favor.

Well, I enjoy living in NH and not living on top of filthy coal power plants in KC. If you have seen that filthy plant in north Lawrence you'll quickly figure out why electricity is "cheap." I pay more for my electricity, but I will take cleaner air anyday of the week.

[cp1969]

Originally Posted by GraniteStater

Well, I enjoy living in NH and not living on top of filthy coal power plants in KC. If you have seen that filthy plant in north Lawrence you'll quickly figure out why electricity is "cheap." I pay more for my electricity, but I will take cleaner air anyday of the week.

What are you talking about? The air quality around here is fine....
AIRNow - Air Quality Maps
AIRNow - Air Quality Maps

For NH:
AIRNow - New Hampshire Air Quality Conditions & Forecasts


And who said electric rates are cheap? I didn't.

[GraniteStater]

Originally Posted by cp1969

What are you talking about? The air quality around here is fine....
AIRNow - Air Quality Maps
AIRNow - Air Quality Maps

For NH:
AIRNow - New Hampshire Air Quality Conditions & Forecasts


And who said electric rates are cheap? I didn't.

Local air quality is very contingent on weather patterns. In a typical summer, KC has many yellow and orange air quality days. Where I live now we only have a few yellow air quality days. Visibility is often 50+ miles. I used to live in Lawrence, and you couldn't pay me to live close to that coal plant again. On days when an inversion was present you could definitely notice it. That plant is grandfathered into the system and was built in the 1950s.
The KC metro has 12 coal units and NH has 1. I'll stand by my statment that NH as better air quality on that fact alone.

[cp1969]

The KC metro has 12 coal units and NH has 1. I'll stand by my statment that NH as better air quality on that fact alone.

Sorry, the facts don't support you. Feel free to check those links any day you want but you're going to have a hard time convincing those of us who live here that the air quality is in any way 'bad'.

[drjones96]

My house has about 1788 sq ft upstairs and probably about 1200 sq ft in the basement (which isn't finished but there is still air pumping down there). So that's nearly 3000sqft of space that has to be heated/cooled.

Our monthly average is approximately $200. And that's not shabby b/c we were paying over $300/mo in Fort Worth on a purely electric house that was only 2000 sq ft.

I keep track of our electric and gas bills by month and put them in a spreadsheet so I know about what to expect from month to month. Spring and Fall are the gravy months where the bills get low b/c it's about right to open some windows and shut off the heat/AC system. In the middle of these months the combined gas and electric cost could be as low as $150. During the coldest winter months the gas bill gets up there pretty high and the combined bill will be about $275. During the hottest part of the summer our bills got up to about $200.

So...

$150 (Low)
$200 (Average)
$275 (High)

In terms of $/sq-ft = $0.067/sq-ft. So if you had a newish house that was insulated about the same as mine with a heat/AC system that was about 85% efficient you may be able to approximate using that figure. Bump it up by a penny per sq ft if it's an old house with an inefficient heat/AC unit.

When I moved here initially I was living in an apartment that was about 1100 sq ft and it was purely electric. My electric bills averaged about $80/mo during the 3 months I was there. And that works out to about $0.073/sq-ft. Givin that it was a pretty old and run down apt it makes sense.

So if you're looking at an old house that's about 800 sq ft....$0.075 X 800 sq ft = $60/mo. + or - $15 depending on the season.