I’m curious: how much do your power bills go up in winter?
In the summer months we’ve been using 4-5 units of power a day, spending around $40 a month.
In May and June we used an average of 7 units a day, costing $55/60 a month respectively.
In July, that went up to 7.5 units and $70 – a wee bit worrying since we also started using our old gas heater partway through July rather than our inefficient little fan heater, which I thought would save us money on power. Apparently not! Add on the $30 it cost us for a gas bottle (which only lasted us the month) and we spent $100 in this area in July. (More than double our summer expenditure!)
As a reminder, we live in a tiny little house – our flat is one bedroom, one bathroom, with a small, long open space that’s about half kitchen and half lounge.
Add on to this the fact that while reading random things online, I found out that our gas heater may be slowly releasing toxic fumes into the house. It heats up super quickly, which is great, but being an ‘unflued’ heater gives off unhealthy gases into the surrounding areas.
I can testify that sometimes I get prickly eyes when it’s on, and in the past couple of weeks that old tightness in my chest has returned, much like at our last house.
So, I guess after this gas bottle runs out, that’s it. We’ll be looking for a better form of electric heater for next winter.
It’s galling enough we have to shoulder the burden of heating this freezing place (the coldest yet of several extremely cold places we’ve rented) to a bearable indoor standard. But having our heating source slowly poisoning us? Gotta draw the line somewhere.
God, I can’t wait to buy a house.
