Do it Yourself: Re: [DIY] Have a Question

31 December 2014

Re: [DIY] Have a Question

The two biggest consumers of electricity is the hot water heater and the heating/cooling system. Followed by the dryer and cooking range. You might try pulling the main breaker to the house and see if your outside meter stops spinning.

If it *doesn't* it means that something *outside* your home is drawing power (hot tub? pool? sneaky neighbor?). That

will at least isolate the problem to something inside our home and then it's just a process of elimination. If your meter

is still spinning with all power to the house turned off, you can get your electric company to come out and find out

where the power drain is coming from. It could quite possibly be a faulty meter.

-aki

On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 7:53 AM, Bob Davis bob@wrobertdavis.com [DoIt_Yourself] <DoIt_Yourself@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Is your electric meter the mechanical type that has a disc spinning? It spins faster as your usage increases. You may be able to ascertain roughly if your water heater is the culprit.

Turn the breaker off that controls the water heater. Observe how fast the disc is spinning. Then turn the breaker on and see how much it is spinning. As the water heater is a high energy consumer, it should be noticeable at your meter.

You could check your meter several times a day and see if it is spinning at the high rate and get a pretty good idea if the water heater is running all the time.

In my area, we have electronic meters and I can go online and look at my usage chart throughout the day to see things like increased air conditioner usage during the hottest part of the day during the summer.

Bob

On Dec 30, 2014, at 10:50 PM, John Burke jburke9564.1@gmail.com [DoIt_Yourself] <DoIt_Yourself@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

no rate increase usage chart shows a lot of usage,