3 years later - New house, new expenses
So it has been a long time. I sold my old place last year & moved into my new house in April 2015 (a 1,700 square foot bungalow). I decided to revive this thread to track my spending. Clearly there's A LOT of improvement needed to get this place making a profit like my old condo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65TUHAJLob4
April 2015 housing costs: Natural Gas - $134.21 Electricity - $116.95 Water - $95.25 Other expenses: Telephone - $39.97 Insurance - $143.43 Water Heater Rental - $9.63 Property Tax - $310.17 Mortgage P+I - $1,083.08 Total April '15 Housing Costs: $1,932.69 Rent collection from housemates: $1,200.00 Monthly Deficit: $732.69 ---------------------------------------------- I plan on developing my basement with 2 more bedrooms, so I anticipate getting another $1,200/month rental income once I get that up and running. My house also had Halogen lighting everywhere & I've recently switched to LED everywhere. And that fridge! Such an energy suck (1,300 KwH/year!). |
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I think you have real career potential doing late night product adverts. I'm not sure when this place was built, but maybe Disco music would be more fitting. Maybe this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX7MbG6MiQs Best, -AC |
Nice to see a condensing furnace in an existing home. When I was looking for houses and also when my brother was too, we were looking at houses of a similar size and from the 80s or 90s and every since one had the original 30ish year old furnace, many natural draft.
"Water Heater Rental - $9.63" ? Huh?? |
You're bang right on AC_Hacker with that Donna Summer song. The house was built in 1983 :)
The high-efficient furnace was definitely a bonus. The weird thing I noticed is that it seems to have variable speeds for the fan when using the heat. I'm not too sure why a low speed blowing is beneficial - I'm used to my old mid-efficient furnace of my old place where you could feel air almost at the ceiling whenever it was on. And yeah, it's very popular to rent a water heater in the city of Regina. It costs $115.50/year to rent, however the company services it for free: WHY RENT? - Heath Water Heater Rentals I bought out the existing water softener though - Culligan wanted $300/year to keep the rental contract when I bought my house. Now that's crazy :p. |
Glad to see you back Peakster! How are you liking the new place so far? If you answered this in the video, sorry. I'm at work and can't view them.
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Also, my wife and I's house is 9 years old and I am pretty confident (not 100%) that it is the original water heater. Quote:
Just for curiosity sake, I checked Lowes' website. They sell up to "12-year" electric water heaters and no less than "6-year" water heaters. That would imply that the manufacturer fully expects their water heater to last at least 6 years, probably with minimum servicing. I guess I just have a hard time understanding the benefits of renting, there is often very few. |
The company wouldn't do it if they didn't end up ahead. This reminds me of extended warranties for electronics, stuff never breaks in the first 3 years but they get an extra 25% more on each sale. I don't understand renting something that is permanently installed in a house that I own. Especially when 4 years of rental is the same price as buying one new. My water heater is 7 years old, I'll pull the anode rod an likely replace it and then check it again with an interval based on how the one I pulled out looked. Not too difficult or expensive.
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Daox: I'm liking the house a lot. The layout is really well designed & it has so many more features than my old place (central A/C, central vacuum, en-suite bath, fireplace, garage, etc). A lot more upkeep than my little 2 story condo I had though, that for sure. At least there's no more condo fees or 'special assessments' ;).
natethebrown: I didn't realize that water heaters can be fairly inexpensive to buy. A new 41 gallon natural gas unit is around $600: Moffatt G6 Water Heater, 41 Gallons | Canadian Tire. That's almost 5 years of rental fees. Electric heaters are 1/2 the purchase cost of gas but with electricity being is about $0.13/kWh it's tough to say if the higher electric bill would offset its price. Anyone have recommendations? I've read electric lasts a lot longer though. My old condo didn't have soft water at all, so now that I own my water softener it should add even more life expectancy to the water heater. |
Maybe buy an electric tank to use as just a tank and then build your own CHP setup for hot water and space heating?
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May 2015 housing costs:
Natural Gas - $62.15 Electricity - $88.99 Water - $125.12 Other expenses: Telephone - $39.41 Wifi - $20.00 (contribution to housemate) Netflix - 8.99 Insurance - $143.43 Water Heater Rental - $9.63 Property Tax - $310.17 Mortgage P+I - $1,083.08 Total May '15 Housing Costs: $1,890.97 Rent collection from housemates: $1,200.00 Monthly Deficit: $690.97 ---------------------------------------------- Water bill increased - turns out that front & backyard lawn irrigation uses 100 litres every 60 seconds! Wifi and Netflix bills introduced. |
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