So, back a couple of months ago, the utility company came and read my meters. You probably think this is something that would happen monthly, but out here in God’s Country, they only dispatch a meter reader every other month. Now, the electric meter is digital, so any idiot can read that (though you have to figure out which is the off-peak meter, and which is on-peak; I make an effort to use as much as possible off-peak, which saves me a whopping nine-tenths of one cent per kWh), but the gas meter is one of the old-school dially meters so, well, pretty much any idiot should be able to read that, too, to be honest. Especially a “professional” meter reader.

So, anyhow, I get the bill and the gas usage is like triple what it ought to be. It followed an “estimated” reading, but, still, I was pretty stunned (as I believe I may have mentioned at the time). The only think I have here that uses gas is the hot water generator (commonly called a boiler, though technically it isn’t a boiler, since it doesn’t make steam). Well, there’s a pool heater, too, but you’ve got a better chance of seeing God than ever seeing that sucker run.

The boiler makes hot water for heat, and they also had it running to a heat exchanger in the water storage tank to make domestic hot water (I’ll be making use of this for my solar water heating project – assuming I ever get around to it). Using the heating system to make domestic hot water seemed kind of stupid to me (not quite so bad if you’re running the boiler constantly, but having the heat on in the summer – assuming we ever get summer around here; kinda disappointed I had to revert to the heavy jacket yesterday morning, with temps down in the 30s – seemed like a bad idea; I mean, how much 180° water do you have to run through a few hundred feet of 1″ supply and return line to heat 50 gallons of water to 110° or so?). Plus, for the three heating zones, I have programmable t-stats that were more or less set to “off” for about 20 hours a day, give or take. Mostly, we relied on the pellet stove (and blankets, sweaters, and hoodies – as my dad used to tell my mom, “put some clothes on if you’re cold”) for heat, and it was a mighty cold winter.

Once I got that bill, the t-stats went to 55 degrees max, 24/7, and I bought and installed a 40 gallon electric water heater hooked to a timer. It heats the water in the tank in the morning (off-peak) and again at night – a total of about 3 hours a day – and in between the water stays plenty hot enough for anything you might want to do. Or anything I might want to do. I would love to have installed a tankless heater but, sadly, the cost was just too much and they require some major electric service which I just didn’t have room in the panel to install, or I could have gone with gas, but the layout of the house and the gas supply would have meant running a lot of gas pipe and no real good way to get it there, plus a vent, and there just isn’t enough money to be saved to justify the expense.

With our low flow shower heads, faucets, toilets (I really need to install that dual-flush adapter), and front-loading washer that had damn well better only be used with cold water (note to self, shut the hot water supply off to the washer), we average about 60 gallons per day total water usage between the two of us, so the hot water usage should be a lot less. With the timer, I think we’re doing OK, and the difference in cost between this and a tankless solution will give me a good jump on the solar (which, if it works out OK for the domestic water, I’ll expand to supplement the heat).

Now, what was it I was gonna say?

Oh, yeah, the gas meter. To shorten a long story, after putting in the water heater, I went to have a look at the meter after a couple of weeks, to see how I’d been doing. The “actual” meter reading on 3/23 had been 3223. When I read the meter well after that, it was 2944. In other words, they fucked me. Looking a past usage, it should have been more like 2850 or something. There’s really no way to read 28xx as 32xx, so I have no idea what happened (except that 3223 is pretty darn similar to the date of 3/23, so maybe he wrote the date in the wrong place or something). I don’t know. All I know is that what should have been about 100 therms turned into about 400 therms.

So I did a customer reading this time around (as it was an off month) – still 2944, as we are using no gas at this point – and sent it in. Their system apparently figured I’m an idiot who can’t read a meter (should have offered me a job), so they estimated it again.

Well, screw that. I took a picture of the meter and sent it in to prove I’m not a moron. I mean, not only did I not use the previous 300 therms, I sure as hell didn’t use another 100.

So, anyhow, instead of bills totaling $700 for two months, it was more like $300, so not only do I not have a bill this month, I still have a credit balance of $186, which should cover next month and at least some of the next. And I’ll be reading the meters myself every month, too. Gotta keep an eye on these bastids.

All of which is just a long way of saying I really don’t have much to say this morning. Except if anybody has about a 5,000 gallon tank I can use to capture some of the 4,000 or so gallons a day of ground water I’m pumping out of basement, let me know. Not sure what the hell to do with it (I can only flush the toilets so many times), but it sure seems a shame to waste it (even my new sump pond is overflowing at this point).

Oh, and Happy Fifth of May.