Reality check - the electric bill

(I am going to migrate older posts from my first Rosemary Hill website and post them here, but here are some thoughts this morning about the electric bill, repairs, and all that fun home ownership junk that makes us age faster, I'm sure. LOL) 

Rosemary Hill

Reality check -- the electric bill.

When we moved to Rosemary Hill, we were worried about the electric bill, because everything is electric, there is no gas stove or hot water heater or clothes dryer, like we've been used to for a few houses. Also, the house is 3,000 square feet, all one level, so has a LOT of areas to heat or cool. I'd asked the power company what the last bills were like for the previous owners, and he said in the winter they were hovering around $500 and in the summer $600.
😳😳😳
So, that was not acceptable and I ran around, being really paranoid about turning lights off and not using the heat -- we had tons of firewood and taught the girls how to build a fire in the wood stove and keep it stoked throughout the day. Our bills were averaging $120.

Then it started to get hot, and this is almost the desert, so it gets pretty hot here -- but we rarely use the air conditioner, only when it soars above 85 inside. We learned how to manage the heat with opening this half of the house, closing that half, switching everything halfway through the day, paying attention to where the wind was coming from, and using fans. We also use the clothesline we installed for everything but towels and our fleece blankets because I don't like crunchy towels or blankets.

The highest bill this summer was last month, and it was $189. I just got the latest bill -- $168.    ?????    We can only think that the previous owners literally kept either the heat on or the cool on 24-7.

PANIC TIME --- Our heat pump stopped cooling the house on Wednesday (but it worked Tuesday, the day it climbed to 103!), and so we freaked out about it, but my friend Mike and my brother both suggested it was likely the starter (I didn't know what that was, or how to check it) but then my friend Kathy's husband walked us through the process of checking it, and it WAS a dead capacitor, and the new one is on its way here -- $17.90 from Amazon. BOOM.

We knew buying a house this large was going to be a little nerve-wracking when things go wrong, but so far, so good.

Now, if we could figure out why the freezer keeps dripping water on the floor - I defrosted everything, so nothing's blocked by ice... back to YouTube I go. <3

Unless someone out there knows about refrigeration units?