My First Month Electric Bill

[jjfromtheburgh]

Well i just got my first months electric bill. That would be for the first full month of usage. WOW!!! is all i can say. My bill doubled from the prior month. My bill went from $150 to $300. I have a GCS LX 11000 tub. I can attribute this increase to the tub and nothing else. The A/C has been on all summer long and i have been paying about $150 for the past few months. I called GCS and they said for me to reprogram the filtration settings. I thought i was using the default - (2) two hour cylces per day. I set it back to that and now have to play the waiting game. Does anyone have any tips that will help reduce my electric consumption in the future? I am in Pittsburgh, PA so the weather is great now? I just fear that when winter arrives that my bill will skyrocket even higher.

So far we have been enjoying the tub. I had one small minor issue with the topside control panel and they sent me out a new one in a few days which i was able to replace myself.

[DjPiLL]

Well i just got my first months electric bill. That would be for the first full month of usage. WOW!!! is all i can say. My bill doubled from the prior month. My bill went from $150 to $300. I have a GCS LX 11000 tub. I can attribute this increase to the tub and nothing else. The A/C has been on all summer long and i have been paying about $150 for the past few months. I called GCS and they said for me to reprogram the filtration settings. I thought i was using the default - (2) two hour cylces per day. I set it back to that and now have to play the waiting game. Does anyone have any tips that will help reduce my electric consumption in the future? I am in Pittsburgh, PA so the weather is great now? I just fear that when winter arrives that my bill will skyrocket even higher.

So far we have been enjoying the tub. I had one small minor issue with the topside control panel and they sent me out a new one in a few days which i was able to replace myself.

There is no way to really tell unless you have the tub metered. Are you sure your overall electrical usage hasn't gone up?

My Epic is probably using 3-5 extra KWH per day... TOPS right now.

[spatech (the unreal one)]

Well i just got my first months electric bill. That would be for the first full month of usage. WOW!!! is all i can say. My bill doubled from the prior month. My bill went from $150 to $300. I have a GCS LX 11000 tub. I can attribute this increase to the tub and nothing else. The A/C has been on all summer long and i have been paying about $150 for the past few months. I called GCS and they said for me to reprogram the filtration settings. I thought i was using the default - (2) two hour cylces per day. I set it back to that and now have to play the waiting game. Does anyone have any tips that will help reduce my electric consumption in the future? I am in Pittsburgh, PA so the weather is great now? I just fear that when winter arrives that my bill will skyrocket even higher.

So far we have been enjoying the tub. I had one small minor issue with the topside control panel and they sent me out a new one in a few days which i was able to replace myself.

Altering your filter cycle will help a little but that is not the main culprit. Open the sides of your spa and look at the insulation (or lack of). You can wait until your next bill comes but I'd expect it to be mostly the same. Some of us talk endlessly about spas that sell for less up front but cost more to operate due to how they are made and it's not just the Costco spas. Yours is like most thermo pane spas where the theory behind how they insulate never seems to matches the reality and the insualtion they do put in is often minimal.

You're going to need to improve your insulation to change anything noticeably.

[DjPiLL]

Also there is no reason to wait for the next bill to find out.

I read my meter daily and I log my electrical usage per day. If you log your KWH usage per day, you can project what your next electrical bill will be if you know your KWH rate.

[Trigger]

Also there is no reason to wait for the next bill to find out.

I read my meter daily and I log my electrical usage per day. If you log your KWH usage per day, you can project what your next electrical bill will be if you know your KWH rate.

$150 for running a hot tub in July? Even with a low end thermal design that sounds crazy. Something is out of whack.

I'd be getting the dealer out there and see if you can meter the tub. If that really is the cost to operate I would dreading the winter. I could finance a new Hotsprings AND heat it, for less than you electrical costs alone.

[jjfromtheburgh]

Also there is no reason to wait for the next bill to find out.

I read my meter daily and I log my electrical usage per day. If you log your KWH usage per day, you can project what your next electrical bill will be if you know your KWH rate.

Thanks for the info!!!! How do you have the tub metered? Also, I just logged my electric meter and plan to twice daily for a few days and see where things stand.

[jjfromtheburgh]

Well i just got my first months electric bill. That would be for the first full month of usage. WOW!!! is all i can say. My bill doubled from the prior month. My bill went from $150 to $300. I have a GCS LX 11000 tub. I can attribute this increase to the tub and nothing else. The A/C has been on all summer long and i have been paying about $150 for the past few months. I called GCS and they said for me to reprogram the filtration settings. I thought i was using the default - (2) two hour cylces per day. I set it back to that and now have to play the waiting game. Does anyone have any tips that will help reduce my electric consumption in the future? I am in Pittsburgh, PA so the weather is great now? I just fear that when winter arrives that my bill will skyrocket even higher.

So far we have been enjoying the tub. I had one small minor issue with the topside control panel and they sent me out a new one in a few days which i was able to replace myself.

Altering your filter cycle will help a little but that is not the main culprit. Open the sides of your spa and look at the insulation (or lack of). You can wait until your next bill comes but I'd expect it to be mostly the same. Some of us talk endlessly about spas that sell for less up front but cost more to operate due to how they are made and it's not just the Costco spas. Yours is like most thermo pane spas where the theory behind how they insulate never seems to matches the reality and the insualtion they do put in is often minimal.

You're going to need to improve your insulation to change anything noticeably.

the insulation is the foam kind. looks like they sprayed only the shell. and then they installed some kind of insulated wrap around the exterior and then attached the side panels. any suggestions on how to install additional insulation? what kind would i use?

[jjfromtheburgh]

So i did some more research and found out that there was a rate increase from the prior month. So my bill really only increased by $120 and not $150 like I originally stated. I spoke to the electric company and they said i could obtain daily meter reading online which will help in evaluating my overall usage.

I still would like to know what type of insualtion to use??? I figure you probably can't have too much.

[thylantyr]

Neighbor came over complaining that this past electric bill has sky rocketed for no known reason and wanted to compare

notes with our bill. Sadly, our bill has the new spa on it and it was $160 more. Comparing notes tells me the electric company

seems to be pulling a scam by raising the price on electricity. I have changed my spa ways this month and manually control

the on/off cycles, before I was too generous and left it running too long, that's ok, I had to learn how to manage the water,

a small learning curve.

[Deus66]

Something else to look at when you get a huge jump in a utility bill, is whether they just guessed at your bill for a period of time, and then came out and actually read it. Where I live the regulations say the utilities can estimate (guess) what your bill will be for up to 3 months, before they have to actually read it (yep, only have to read it 4 times a year by law). A couple years ago everyone I know got a bill from the Gas / Electric company that was more than twice what they usually paid (3 months of guessing followed by an actual read).

Just a thought

[sandi]

I still would like to know what type of insualtion to use??? I figure you probably can't have too much.

Go to the current thread "Anyone Own an Infinity Laguna Spa?" and follow the link that Ken Gorman posted. He has some great directions (with pics) of how he added insulation to his spa. We followed his directions (though not as thoroughly) and added rigid foam panels that we bought at Lowes. Cost about $60 and took about 8 hours but it helped with our electric bills in the winter. We also bought a floating blanket, which I believe helps as well. Another piece of advice that I got from Roger on this forum is to set the filtering cycle to match a time when you normally use the spa since the spa is heating the water during that time (we keep ours in economy mode so the water only heats during the 2 filtering cycles each day rather than maintaining a constant temp 24/7).

Sandi