I got a gym membership at Golds Gym, about a 10 minute drive from my apartment and office in Cambridge. The best thing about it is that it's open 24 hours Monday - Friday. Now I need to figure out weekly workout schedule that will fit my day-to-day activities. No excuses. The longer I wait, the more I'll wish I started earlier when summer arrives.
I received the gas bill for my Cumberland RD property, the one in which two rental units have gas included in the rent (there's only one gas meter). Total due? $1,358. I read the meter in the basement and compared it to the last meter read on the bill to figure out how much gas has been used since that bill. I figured out that between January 24th and January 28th (4 days), $130 worth of gas was used. Damn! How the hell am I going to afford this? I'm going to tell the tenants they have to pay 1/4 of the utilities.
I canceled the digital cable package, which is also included in those two unit's rent. It was costing me $75 a month! I have basic cable in my apartment in Cambridge and I get 75 channels for $10. When the cable guy came by to change the cable to basic, he said Lowell only gets 14 channels with basic cable. Blah. The tenants can either deal with the basic cable or pay $25 a month each for the digital package.
I received the electric bill for my apartment in Cambridge. There are three electric baseboard heaters that heat the entire basement -- and they do a damn good job heating it. I feared the the electric bill was going to cost a fortune because I had the heat running most of the time, however, to my surprise the bill was only $120!
After what happen with the water pipes freezing on Cumberland road last week, I've been paranoid that it will happen again. So I turned on the furnace and set the thermostat to its lowest setting; 50°F. However, after I received that $1300 gas bill, I knew I had to figure something else out. So I decided to install a small 3' electric heater on the hallway wall, right under all the water pipes in the basement. I'm starting to really like the idea of electric heat. This weekend I'm going to install a 4' or 8' electric baseboard heater near the bedroom area in my basement. Hopefully I will be able to do away with gas heat entirely! I'm curious to see how much the electric baseboard heaters effect my electric bill.
With all these energy problems, I was looking into solar energy options and found a really cool company called CitizenRu. Basically they will come and install an entire solar energy system, and maintain it, for free. You give them a $500 deposit, sign a contract (1 year, 5 year, or 25 year) and they will hook the solar panels up to your current electrical system. The thing is, they charge you for the solar electricity you use, however they lock in the current electric rate for the entire term of your contract -- so you never pay more than you would if you didn't use the solar energy. Since electricity prices go up over time, you would eventually be saving money because you'd have locked in the electric rate for the entire term of your contract (obviously the most savings come from the 25 year contract). It's an ingenious way of getting people to start using solar energy, at no additional cost to the consumer.
Although this specific solution doesn't appeal to me, I do love the idea of setting up solar panels on the roof's of my properties to at least take some load off the electric heat and common electric meters.
I finally finished the two 2 bedroom apartments on Ware Street. I need to take pictures. I sold my Nikon Coolpix P1 point-and-shoot digital camera to David, and plan to buy a Olympus Stylus 770 SW for its rugged, go anywhere ability. I also was able to rent both of the apartments on Ware street, so now I only have two vacant units; a 1 bedroom on Ware ST and the 2 bedroom on Cumberland RD. Both will require time and money to finish and I don't have either right now. I plan to have at least the 2 bedroom ready and rented by March 1st and the 1 bedroom by April 1st.
We use to live in a house with electric heat. The heat was wires in the ceiling and wow was the house warm. Each room had its own setting.
Our Ranch home (1333 Sq Ft): Gas bill not more than 110 and Electric/Sewage/Garbage pickup was about 86.00 this last time.
It’ll be interesting to see it the next time, since the temp outside is in the minuses…. it’s soooooooooo cold here.
COLD is right! We’ve had barely 2 inches of snow all winter, so far anyway. I’ve noticed that electric heat feels nicer than forced hot air — not sure what it is.
I enclosed the bedroom area in my basement with huge sheets of plastic. So now the area is closed off from the rest of the basement. When I turned on the wall-mounted non-venting furnace, I could feel within a few minutes the oxygen levels dropping. I literally started to smell pure carbon monoxide filling up in the room. The plastic sheets were being sucked inwards because the furnace was starved for fresh air.
The enclosed area filled up with heat within 30 seconds, but I turned it off after a few minutes and installed a 6′ electric baseboard heater instead. It doesn’t heat it as fast, but still gets it up to 60° (compared with 45°!).