electric bill is HUGE

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snook3032

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Sep 19, 2010
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Hi...we are just completing our first season with a sweet gunite pool. We have a heater and it was mistakenly turned on and left on for what I think is 4 days. I went away and left my wife in charge. Air Temps were around 75 those days. Well I recently got the electric bill and it stated I used 5250 KWH in one month! My family always is well under 400KWH in a single month.

Is this even possible?
Note: I have a 26000 gallon pool and the heater is a Aquacal heatpump R410A
 
Welcome to TFP.

The bad news is. It's absolutely possible. An electric pool heater is an energy hog and if you'e daylight temps were in the mid 70's then your night time temps were colder and the heater was operating all the time trying to keep the heat up.
 
Actually, its not technically an electric heater, its a heat pump. They use electricity, but they heat the water by taking heat from the air and putting it into the pool. If you had a true electric heater with coils, then THATS an energy hog! Heeat pumps are far more efficient. Heat pumps generally use about 4-4.5 kw per hour, give or take. Mine uses about 4 kw per hour. If my heat pump ran 10 hours per day, 7 days a week, 30 days in a month, thats ~1200 kw/hr for the month. If your normal use is 400, and you add even another 2000 for the heat pump (which is a lot!), then your use would only be around 2400, not the 5200 you reported. Something else is running your use up. It's not the heat pump, i dont think. Even 4 days wouldnt do that (4 days x4kw/h=384 kW).
Even if it ran 24/7 for a month, thats 2880, still not enough to account for your high use last month. A/C maybe?
 
Yes, a solar blanket will cut the heating cost a great deal, no matter what the kind of heater, heat pump or gas.
The point of my calculations however, are just based on showing the cost for running the heat pump on a per hour or day basis, regardless of solar cover use or not; its irrelevent for figuring out a per day cost for run time. Using my examples, it would be really hard for a heat pump to use that much power even if it ran 24/7. So..i dont think the heat pump can account for the icreasedusage seen.

The described usage of 400 kwhr a month is really low. With a filter pump running 8 hours a day, presumably a/c, and everything else that goes into running a house, that just seems really really, low.
 
Thanks for the correction BK. I didn't get that it was a heat pump. They are more efficient than an electric heater.

Thinking about it now it sounds like the house HVAC may be using the heat strips instead of the unit ot keep the house warm. Those are electric heat strips and they are enormous resistance heaters. I know if mine ever kicks on they'll draw 100 amps.

P.S. R410A is the refridgerant used in the system and not the model number. Supply us a model number and we'll have a better idea how much power it actually uses.
 
snook3032 said:
THanks for the replies everyone...Model # for aquacal is 120AHDSBTJ..thanks
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PoolSean would know the exact numbers, but i think thats a 120,000 btu model. Also, keep in mind that it wont put out that many depending on the ambient air conditions. The less BTU, the less power uses. I would say that probably would not draw more than 5 kw/hr. So even at 12 hours per day for 30 days, it wouldnt use more than 1800 kw. Now, if you ran it 24/7 for a month, you are looking at 3600. But i really dont know anyone that runs their heat pump 24/7 for a month.

Snook, how much do you run your heater on average (per day, per month). If you dont have a solar cover, you need one. :wink:
 
How long do you run you pump and what hp is it? My gas bill would increase with my heater not my power much. I had a 2 hp pump running 24/7 for a manth and it raised my bill $125. I have since wemt 2 speed 1 hp and running pump 10 hr's a day and now the bill is only slightly more.
 

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I have a heat pump for our pool and we keep it very warm, like in the high 80's and the low 90's. Our house is 2800sq ft and my wife keeps it a 71 or 72. We used 7500 kw last month. So yes its very possible to use what you did... That 7500 kw was $ 276.00... I didn't think it was to bad actually..
 
7500 is a lot power. Actually, your heat pump may have accounted for less than you think. Your A/C uses more than one wolud think. I have 2 A/C units and when both run, they pull a ton of power. In September, when I use minimal A/C and a lot of heat pump, my bill goes down by almost $150.
 
Snook,

If you live in the North East - that large increase in your bill is probably - most definitely - Air Conditioning.

Our last Hydro Bill shows that we used 2868 KWh between June 27-Aug 26th. (60 days) so 1434 per month.

Our typical bill is around 1,800 for 2 months .... (900/month)

Our pool was installed the 1st 2 weeks of August, and we started the pump on Aug 12.
So that means we ran our 1 HP pump 24/7 between Aug 12 and Aug 28th.

When I realized that we didn't need the pump running constantly I started to run it 10 hrs/day.

Our increase on our last Hydro Bill was due mainly to the temperatures in July and August since we needed air conditioning going constantly.

Go easy on your wife. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the Heat Pump.
 
hayfarmer said:
I have a heat pump for our pool and we keep it very warm, like in the high 80's and the low 90's. Our house is 2800sq ft and my wife keeps it a 71 or 72. We used 7500 kw last month. So yes its very possible to use what you did... That 7500 kw was $ 276.00... I didn't think it was to bad actually..
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Hayfarmer- where do you live? We pay 11.7cents per Kwh here in Las Vegas.(Hoover Dam resource NO help) Your power is CHEAP! My fill would be over $877 plus fees tax ect. for that much power :shock:
 
civicturbo said:
Hayfarmer- where do you live? We pay 11.7cents per Kwh here in Las Vegas.(Hoover Dam resource NO help) Your power is CHEAP! My fill would be over $877 plus fees tax ect. for that much power :shock:
Click to expand...

His sig says eastern Washington State - my guess is Bonneville Power, federally managed hydro-electric power plants make it the cheapest place for electricity in the US (as far as I know). Alcoa Aluminum used to be up there because the electric was so cheap (AL is very electric intensive). When I moved away from Beaverton Oregon in 1983 I nearly had a heart attack when my first electric bill came due.
 
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