...or, in my case, the suspense and thrill of seeing that extra $150 or more bucks has been lost. After replacing some ailing appliances our power consumption was beginning to follow a nice, smooth sine wave through the seasons, with an ever dropping trend. The curve has been sweeping up the winter climb until ::bang:: it jumped up several hundred kWh before continuing on its way.
There are only 3 normal (and I assume legal) things that consume that much energy in American homes: Heating/AC, hot water heaters, and well pumps. Your computer doesn't rate next to those, the list of criminal power hogs after our cars.
The gigantic, upward hitch is a classic hot water heater with one of two dead heating elements. You still get hot water, but the remaining heating element runs constantly to keep up the temperature. We know we need a new one but it will be a significant plumbing operation, not something to look forward to, especially in the winter.
After two months the utility bill arrives and another several hundred kWh jump. Given that there is still hot water available from the shower tap, a hot water tank failure is not the answer. Other than blowing an element, they more or less work or they don't. Baseboard heating is not a likely cause. The first jump along would require that the heat be on all day and night. They don't have moving parts to fail like a furnace and there are more than one. This leaves the well pump which is highly energy efficient and new.
Okaaaaay...I had a sinking feeling about our soaking early winter and fast frost that turned saturated soils into frozen stone. Water expands when it freezes, one of the only things that does, which is what gives us all so many problems with frozen pipes. The power of water to move, lift, or break nearly anything in its way as it freezes cannot be underestimated. The new cracks in the living room ceiling very much appear to be from soggy ground lifting and dropping a section of foundation added to the house decades ago. The not fully compressed soil dropped a section of the house, opening cracks plastered over more times than I can imagine. This happened sufficiently coincidentally with the first jump in power use to send a warning flare over the realm of my personal mind cartoons, the landscape my mind retreats to while trying to appear interested in conference room conversations.
I looked at the bill, paid it, and looked at it some more. The flares are starting again and more than one this time, remembering the labored water pressure in the early winter, the crushing ice from within and without. Darn, a broken pipe. A leak somewhere outside and suddenly getting worse again. Outside because that much water seems as though it would be noticeable.
Our household mobilizes and we compare power and water usage estimates against normal performance for pumps and appliances. The water pressure is measured with various main valves shut off, isolating a 2 psi drop over ~5 minutes between the house and the well. first grade math applied against normal use estimates says we are burning nearly 300 gallons of water a day, 3 to 5 times what should be typical for our diminutive farm house with its modernly conservative appliances. The power usage for a pump like ours compared to what we would be running to drag that much water from the earth comes out to 3-5 times normal consumption, an amount similar to my missing hundreds of kWh.
The good news generally is that we have no water or sewage utility bills and they function as efficiently as we can afford to make them. The bad news is we are the utility.
Past experience has left us with contacts and friends to call for this sort of thing. On Monday, I'll ask a sympathetic co-worker for the local number to a small water utility we both know who will send out staff to perform work for an hourly rate. They have the tools, the experience, the time. The soft soil near Old Man Black Walnut gives a guess where the digging may begin. I hope very much it does not harm him, I wanted that tree, he was quite costly and came with a house. Sometimes, it's all about The Trees.
The inefficient, cheap, dishwasher is growling away at this evening's dishes. Evidence suggests it is what begins to smell bad in the kitchen if it is not run once daily. It's annoying and inefficient, I keep hoping to replace it. Our homes and appliances whisper together in the darkest hours while the people within sleep, conspiring and planning for which critical device will be the next to fail in some interesting way when the bank accounts of the alleged owners are at their lowest. A wax ring of a toilet will fail, filling the lower floor with cascades of water, taking the ceiling with it. Or the water from the bath tap will turn cold and black while cleaning up after a puppy with Dire Rear, at the beginning of the clean-up. The dishwasher will jam shut with dishes inside the day before Thanksgiving, only to be opened with crow bars, the dishes prized from within for the guests who will be helping clean up by hand. The credit cards will have no available funds, the company Amex will cover it, I hope we can pay that off before the statement clears. The snake that shorted the hot-tub circuits, burning everything inside the power box to a rank charcoal is not included in the, "vermin exclusion" clause of the homeowner's policy but his damage is still under the deduct able.
We raise our voices and purse our lips and come to accept that no amount of frustration will change things. I will make the phone call to hire help and the stinking dishwasher will grind away for uncountable nights yet to come. Yeti snores through a perfectly normal evening for The Dogs.
