I keep my monthly electric bill information on a spreadsheet. I just entered the information from March and the rate per kwh is Up 30% from 1 year ago.

The rate changes month-to-month and with the seasons depending upon their cost of coal, etc.

The rate in March'11 was 13 cents/kwh vs. 10 cents in March 2010.

You on PSO Widg?

??? PSO ???

Widgeon, I think Rrman is asking if you're with Public Service Company of Oklahoma.
https://www.psoklahoma.com/

Going from TX to AZ, our utility bills are MUCH higher. Water, Electric, Gas.

Granted, we've got a pool here so that has increased usage quite a bit but the cost per unit (KwH, 100gal, Cubic feet) is also higher.
For those that haven't had a pool, I can tell you that you'll see an increase in water and electric usage. And in my case, I've seen much higher gas bills because I've heated the pool through the winter. Why have a pool if you can't use it throughout the year?

I'm w/ a small rural coop.

Where does the co-op get its power?

Lmao. If you heat a pool in the winter ya get what ya get. No sympathy. Not picking on you jets, but I can't think of a bigger waste of a fossils fuel :)

I have an inground pool. It's not worth the hassle. I want to cover it up and covert it into a, oops, I've said too much already.

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If you heat a pool in the winter ya get what ya get. No sympathy. Not picking on you jets, but I can't think of a bigger waste of a fossils fuel :)

LOL! Yeah, we knew a pool would raise our utility bills. For us, it's been worth it to heat it in the winter. I bought the thickest clear cover I could find for it last fall; 16 mil thick and I keep the pool covered when it's not in use. That cut down on heat loss this last winter and there were a couple of really cold weeks (in the 40s) where I didn't go swimming and so I didn't heat the pool - even without heating it for a week, the water retained quite a bit of heat due to the cover.

I haven't needed to heat the pool for the last month though; between the heat here and the pool cover, the pool temp went up almost ten degrees. I was considering leaving the cover off during the daytime but it got cold again yesterday. It'll be back in the 90s at the end of next week (only in the 80s during the week).

Even with the expense of heating the pool, our total utility bills are less than if we were living in a mcmansion so I don't feel bad about wasting the nat gas to heat the pool.
I expect our utility bills to be fairly high in the summertime when we run the air conditioning. Our worst winter month was ~$650 for nat gas + electric + water, although they averaged closer to $550/mo. I didn't consider that to be too bad considering we were heating the pool. For March, our total utility bill was ~$350. April's will probably be a bit less than $300 because although we aren't using much gas or electric right now, the pool water's evaporating fairly quickly - high temps and low humidity will do that; I can't imagine how bad the evaporation would be without a pool cover. (I turned off the autofill for a couple of days and the pool went down by about 2 inches - I was surprised by the amount of evaporation).
In comparison, our total monthly utility bills in San Antonio averaged ~$250/mo.

LOL Ifly - You are going to learn to hate that pool over time. All first time pool owners think its such a novelty at first. It looks all pretty and sparkling (not yours with the pool cover), but they are one of the worst resource sucking discretionaries imaginable.

During the summer, water level will drop an 1" a day. Typically, I'd say you'll be shocked when you get the water bill, but hell you heat your POOL. Very, very, VERY few do that in Phoenix.

Once upon a time I had that love affair with the "pool". Got a house with a pool (around Cactus & the freeway). Thank goodness for the chlorine dude. He'd come with his tanks and drop his line in the pool and aerate it with gas. I believe he was cutting his lifespan short by 10 - 15 years from all the chemical he was inhaling (he'd have accidents).

Cost of water, electricity, chemicals, labor = nightmare Then you added cost of NG to it too. Non pool owners don't realize the extra labor, cleaning because the auto cleaner misses the steps and other areas.

Its better just to run thru the sprinkler.

I had one for a while and between the automatic chlorinator and the auto pool sweep, the maintenance was very low. We didn't even own a traditional pole vacume. I don't think they are too bad. Heck the hot tube required more work to keep it clean and balance the chemicals.

I had a Kreepy Krauly (sp) and when it was on it would sweep the bottom of the pool, but that's it, just the bottom, nothing around the stairs, nor the stairs itself and after a big dust storm (Phoenix has a buttload of them), the pool would fill with debris and no, it wouldn't all just gravitate towards the skimmer. You had to be very active with the net.

Its very odd, that my memories of the pool are so different from yours Eighty6. I was solely responsible for the pool. I didn't do chemicals at all (pool man did) and the Kreepy Krawley swept most of it but every single last time I'd walk in the yard, there would be something that needed to be removed. Palm trees are constantly shedding crap and they don't have to be in your yard to get the debris in your pool.

Now heating a hot tub is another matter in winter.

If you've never had a hot tub hummer when the temp out there is 20 below and your girlfriend's hair is a block of ice but below the water it's nice and toasty, you haven't lived.

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You are going to learn to hate that pool over time. All first time pool owners think its such a novelty at first. It looks all pretty and sparkling (not yours with the pool cover), but they are one of the worst resource sucking discretionaries imaginable.

We're only here for 3 years; renting. Included in the rent is weekly pool service including chemicals - the guy puts a couple of tabs weekly into the water return basket which takes care of most of the chlorine needs (we have a floater that holds the tabs but with the pool cover it's better to just drop them in the water return basket). I still have to add a bit of chlorine (I just buy the generic Walmart liquid chlorine and add that) during the week.

Yes, it does suck down extra utilities but our pool is (barely) big enough for me to swim laps in so I don't make any special trips to the gym - the gasoline savings makes up for a lot of the higher utility costs.
The automatic pool cleaner seems to get most of the leaves; I've already trimmed back the one tree that dumps a lot of leaves so it's getting better on that count. I even took my vacuum cleaner outside and vacuumed up the leaves around the pool (we don't have grass).

The spa is worth it, as my wife has a bad hip and when she gets in the spa with the heat and jets, it really helps with her aches and pains. Man, we're getting old.

We don't spend most of our discretionary income so a little bit going into the pool is acceptable. After all, we could simply be renting a larger house but the space we currently have is enough for us. I'm even able to easily get both cars in our two car garage.

Ifly, get a big piece of bubble wrap and use that as your pool cover next winter. It works AMAZINGLY well.

Tesla, that's basically what I've got. It's 16 mil thick and does a great job. I probably won't heat up the pool as much next winter; we'll see.
I'm still using the cover as it cuts down on evaporation but the water is getting close to too warm. I'll probably have to leave the cover off a couple of nights and let the pool cool down a few degrees.

My electric bill for this month was $70 for 21 kilowatt hours. Same month year, I used 28 kilowatt hours but paid less money.

I'm getting more used to the climate here and how to reduce my utility bills. For last month, our bills were:
$88.35 for water. We used 1800 cubic feet of water.
$81.41 for electric. We used 750 kilowatt hours.
$38.73 for gas. We used 22 therms.

~1800 sf house with a pool. I expect to see my electric bill rise considerably through the summer although I'm trying my best to cool the house overnight - if I get the house below 70 in the morning, it doesn't heat up until the early afternoon.