Fortis Bills

[dkazzed]

I'm comparing a 2500 sq ft house in Surrey built in 1990 vs. an 1800 sq ft house in Kelowna built in 2015 but my Fortis gas bills were as high as $250 a month in Surrey vs. $60 tops here (non-equalized gas payments). I took off $50 from the Surrey amount for gas hot water. Even though Kelowna is colder. So if we correct the Surrey amount for the square footage, I'm still using 3x less gas here than I was there. So what are the differences?

-The newer house is better insulated
-The newer house has better windows
-The newer house has a 90%+ efficient furnace vs. the old standard 80% unit.

I wouldn't recommend redoing wall insulation unless you happen to be renovating the room, but reglazing will give you the best bang for the buck. My old condo in Mission for example built in the 70s used budget $20,000 a year for gas bills ($17k-24k actual use). They installed new double glazed low-U value windows and the gas budget has since gone down to $12,000 a year ($10k-13k actual use), it was pretty drastic. At $35,000 to replace 37 patio doors and $37,000 to replace 110 windows, it wasn't a cheap undertaking, but the simple payback period is about 9 years.

Putting in a high efficiency furnace won't have as much effect but will still be good for a number of reasons. First, with a standard efficiency furnace, for every $1 of gas going in, you have 80 cents of heat coming out vs. 90, 95 cents for a modern unit. Second, you could spend a bit more to get a modulating or two stage furnace that could cycle less. Furnaces are like your car, they're highly inefficient until they reach operating temperature which takes a few minutes so constantly cycling on and off means you're spending time getting maybe just 60 cents of heat per dollar. If your furnace is still running, I'd say run it until it dies. But when it does, consider going high efficiency. The prices have actually come down so much that it's not much of a premium anymore, and the only extra would be putting in new PVC combustion venting.

[Bpeep]

All furnaces sold now are high efficiency. You can't get a mid any more.

[stardriftinhorses]

my bill for the same time period was $1490, all electric baseboard heat, house kept at 15C, apx 2800sqft house... it sucks and every year it gets higher and there is nothing we can do about it :(

You got to be kidding me. You sit around at night and wake up to a 15C house. You must be walking around in winter jackets and shoes the whole time???

Pretty much!! blankets, sweaters and pets to cuddle up with an curse Mother Nature for a really cold winter. Its all heat related as my bills in the summer are around $60 per month. I'm seriously considering a wood stove! Any recommendations out there?

What frustrates me is the more power we save the more the rate goes up. i'd love to see what the power consumption for this house was 10 years ago or so.

[Jflem1983]

All furnaces sold now are high efficiency. You can't get a mid any more.

Mid efficient is still like 90 percent or better . Electric is hundred percent efficient . It's expensive tho . I'd take 90 percent and pay the gas bill . My heat if it was electric would be astronomical

[LTD]

You got to be kidding me. You sit around at night and wake up to a 15C house. You must be walking around in winter jackets and shoes the whole time???[/quote]


Pretty much!! blankets, sweaters and pets to cuddle up with an curse Mother Nature for a really cold winter. Its all heat related as my bills in the summer are around $60 per month. I'm seriously considering a wood stove! Any recommendations out there?

What frustrates me is the more power we save the more the rate goes up. i'd love to see what the power consumption for this house was 10 years ago or so.[/quote]


if you have the ability to get your own wood buy yourself a good blaze king wood stove they kick assss turn off your baseboards run a ceiling fan to move air around and be happy, nothing like warming up in front of the stove after a cold day outside

[stardriftinhorses]

Thanks LTD! i will look into that ... so sick of giving my money to Fortis!!

[LTD]

I normally get a logging truck load of fire wood if you have the property to store it its the best way, makes life a lot easier and lasts me about 4 seasons depending on the type of wood. the other bonus is having heat if the power goes out for more than a few hours when its -20

[Bpeep]

Mid efficient is still like 90 percent or better . Electric is hundred percent efficient . It's expensive tho . I'd take 90 percent and pay the gas bill . My heat if it was electric would be astronomical

As of Jan 1, 2010 mid efficiency furnaces were no longer available for sale in bc. Everything is 90% or better and is classified as high efficiency.
Electricity is 100% efficient but a watt of electricity is much costlier than a watt from 90+% efficient gas.

I'd never heat with electricity.

[maryjane48]

soon tesla powerwalls will be built into new houses and complexes and with new silicon batteries coming online , the only use a utility company will have is to transmite the extra power each indavidual is generating .


and site c will be a 24 billion dollar reminder to future generations of how expensive thinking in the past can be

[LTD]

you can pretty much guarantee that instead of giving people a break who only have electricity to use for heat they will start jacking the price of gas so we can all be on a level playing field

[alfred2]

soon tesla powerwalls will be built into new houses and complexes and with new silicon batteries coming online , the only use a utility company will have is to transmite the extra power each indavidual is generating .


and site c will be a 24 billion dollar reminder to future generations of how expensive thinking in the past can be

You are in a dream world, or ndp propoganda. We need all the power we can generate, using fuel will only hurt the environment more , wood is worse then oil.

[Bubalouie]

gotta love the wood burners, guess it would be ok if they burnt wood and didn't add their garbage to it or burnt decent wood.
We have people with wood burning stoves around us and the air just reeks. So much for sleeping with a window open

[LTD]

hey if you want to pay to run my baseboards I will gladly let you but until then I will burn wood and don't care if you don't like it speaking of that time to get a fire goin little chilly in the house

oh and after reading fortis response on castanet about those of us paying ridiculously high bills the less money I hand over to those crooks the better

[W105]

ahh Our government..they increase our hydro rates to outrageous amounts so we end up needing to burn wood, which creates air pollution, which creates more strain on our Healthcare system (anybody with a lung condition or breathing condition knows this ) and then repeatedly tells us that we need to be more concerned about climate change..??

it would be great if common sense came back in fashion..

[tsayta]

But OF COURSE the puppet BCUC ruled in favour of Fortis as predicted by posters on this forum. What a joke. Just like the puppet CRTC if you have a dispute with your communist cell phone provider
https://www.castanet.net/edition/news-s ... htm#193046