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
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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!).

What an exciting video!!

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.

I disagree with their website that says water heaters "last only 3-5 years." We have pretty hard water down here in North Alabama and my parents never replaced their water heater, even after 15 years. Also, I think my dad "serviced" the water heater maybe twice.... (Servicing really is just flushing the tank out. Anyone with a long enough hose can do it in 10 minutes.)

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.

From my understanding, having softer water does improve the life of your appliances, to include your water heater.


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.

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?

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
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Water bill increased - turns out that front & backyard lawn irrigation uses 100 litres every 60 seconds! Wifi and Netflix bills introduced.