"Non-Existent" Inflation.......

As readers will note from a previous post, we have installed a geothermal heating/air conditioning system in our 18 year old home with the object of lowering our monthly heating/air conditioning costs. We anxiously awaited the first new bill. To our dismay, the bill kind of looked like our old bill - $ 708.67 now vs. $947.81 for same period 2 years ago. We were expecting a much sharper drop considering that we had lowered the thermostat (geothermal is much more comfortable at lower temperatures) by three degrees to 67 and were trying to be more conscious of our use in other regards.

How could that be?

The hot water heater and the heating system were getting the first 55 degrees of heat from the earth for "free." We still have several computers (including 2 servers running all the time) and a large house, but it should have been a 40% or better reduction down to $568 or lower.

The answer is that electricity costs in Maryland have gone up by 11.5% (according to our calculations of our billing rates in the last 24 months. That means that unless this levels off somehow (yeah right!!) our heating bill for this house and the same useage will be right back where it was before we installed the geothermal. I don't want to tell you how much the new system cost. Consider it my contribution to global warming reduction......though I suspect the government is going to ask me to contribute a little more to that soon enough. Sphere: Related Content