57 replies to this topic

[Skye]

My family is considering a move to the Folsom/El Dorado Hills area. We are just beginning our search for a neighborhood. I've read the utilities can be very high in El Dorado County vs. in Folsom. How bad are they for about 2500 sq ft?
Also, we've seen a couple of houses in the Lake Hills Estates area that looked interesting (especially for Lake Forest Elementary, our kids are toddlers). Price range ~$475,000. Any comments about that area?
Thanks!

[Mommy2Sydni]

Don't know first hand....but have some friends up there. I think their house was about 3000 sf (w/ a pool) and their summer Electric bill was $1200!!!! and that was with very limited a/c usage. I think their neighbor (who is a stay home mom, so she's home all day) was close to $1800 (a slightly bigger house)!!! YES....that is for 1 month!
I would ask some neighbors near a house that you are looking to buy. Their house was a new development w/ no trees....so that makes a difference.

[4thgenFolsomite]

My family is considering a move to the Folsom/El Dorado Hills area. We are just beginning our search for a neighborhood. I've read the utilities can be very high in El Dorado County vs. in Folsom. How bad are they for about 2500 sq ft?
Also, we've seen a couple of houses in the Lake Hills Estates area that looked interesting (especially for Lake Forest Elementary, our kids are toddlers). Price range ~$475,000. Any comments about that area?
Thanks!

its a nice area to live, but you also pay for water from EID. that can be very expensive. They only put their gas lines in about 10 years ago, so there may also still be an active bond for repaying the expenditure.

[palango]

I can attest that moving from Folsom (SMUD) to El Dorado Hills (PGE), we experienced a HUGE HUGE rate increase. A $350 a month bill for winter and $400 a month for summer is not out of the question for a 2700sq ft home. I hate PGE just as some hate Comcast.

[Warren G]

A reaonable way to make the comparison is to compare the per kilowatt hour and per gas therm rates of SUMD and PG&E, but yes, PG&E is generally more expensive.

[Orangetj]

We live in EDH and haven't found the utility costs to be hugely different from what we paid in Folsom. For our 2700 s.f. house, Winter and Summer, our PG&E bill generally comes in between $150 - $200, running the heat at 67-68 degrees in the winter and the AC at 73-74 in the summer. Our Fall and Spring bills have been in the $80 - $100/month range. I don't know if this is a result of our new house being more efficient than our old house, despite being 36% larger, but that's what we've seen.

[Orangetj]

its a nice area to live, but you also pay for water from EID. that can be very expensive. They only put their gas lines in about 10 years ago, so there may also still be an active bond for repaying the expenditure.

For our family of four, our EID bill has been running about $60/month. Irrigation is done with reclaimed water, which I believe (although I can't be certain without the bill in front of me) is at a significantly lower rate than the house water.

[4thgenFolsomite]

For our family of four, our EID bill has been running about $60/month. Irrigation is done with reclaimed water, which I believe (although I can't be certain without the bill in front of me) is at a significantly lower rate than the house water.

they run two pipelines to each house? one for irrigation and one for domestic? that's not what I heard.

[Terry]

My family is considering a move to the Folsom/El Dorado Hills area. We are just beginning our search for a neighborhood. I've read the utilities can be very high in El Dorado County vs. in Folsom. How bad are they for about 2500 sq ft?
Also, we've seen a couple of houses in the Lake Hills Estates area that looked interesting (especially for Lake Forest Elementary, our kids are toddlers). Price range ~$475,000. Any comments about that area?
Thanks!

You can ask your realtor to get the current owner's utility bills for say 6 months or so.

El Dorado Hills is PG&E for both gas and electric, which makes it a lot higher than if you had PG&E for gas and SMUD for electric like we do in Folsom.

Lake Hills Estates is an older neighborhood with nice homes, good neighborhood and good schools. Make sure that kids aren't bussed to other schools though.

[palango]

There was a 3200 SQ Ft fixer upper short sale/foreclosure on .57 acre behind the new safeway (beechwood?) that was listed for $499, but you can probably get for $425k.

[Orangetj]

they run two pipelines to each house? one for irrigation and one for domestic? that's not what I heard.

Can't speak for all of EDH, but yes, that's what they do in our neighborhood (Serrano). All of the irrigation water for homes, parks and other landscaping is provided through the purple reclaimed water pipes. Pretty cool system, actually, which cuts down significantly on wasted water.

[Lisa in Folsom]

We live in EDH and haven't found the utility costs to be hugely different from what we paid in Folsom. For our 2700 s.f. house, Winter and Summer, our PG&E bill generally comes in between $150 - $200, running the heat at 67-68 degrees in the winter and the AC at 73-74 in the summer. Our Fall and Spring bills have been in the $80 - $100/month range. I don't know if this is a result of our new house being more efficient than our old house, despite being 36% larger, but that's what we've seen.

The only way to compare whether your costs are up would be to pull your Folsom bills and compare usage. It would be just about impossible to have similar costs if your usage was the same since PG & E rates are so much higher. Plus their tiered pricing system is so dramatically higher than SMUD that it is pretty much guaranteed that the rates would be a lot higher.

It would be worth looking at the SMUD website:
http://www.smud.org/...rates.html#rate

It doesn't however explain how the tiered system works, where you pay higher rates, the more power you use. It seems reasonable until you see that the only way to get the lower rates is to live in a tiny apartment in a place where it doesn't get 110 in the summer (read San Francisco where a majority of the PG & E customers live). If you are looking at paying $300 or more a month extra to use PG & E, you could be paying down your principal (unheard of nowadays apparently) instead.

[Orangetj]

I don't have my old Folsom bills any longer, so I guess I can't really do a side-by-side on the rates. All I can speak from is my experience and from looking at my bill-pay history online. That information shows me that we are paying close to the same for our PG&E in EDH as we were for our combined SMUD and PG&E in Folsom, despite the fact that our house is larger in EDH. It's entirely possible that our EDH house is better insulated, that our appliances are more efficient and that our Furnace/AC is of better quality. Perhaps we're just getting lucky. Who knows? All that really matters to me is that it just simply isn't dramatically more expensive for us, if it's more expensive at all.

[Lisa in Folsom]

I don't have my old Folsom bills any longer, so I guess I can't really do a side-by-side on the rates. All I can speak from is my experience and from looking at my bill-pay history online. That information shows me that we are paying close to the same for our PG&E in EDH as we were for our combined SMUD and PG&E in Folsom, despite the fact that our house is larger in EDH. It's entirely possible that our EDH house is better insulated, that our appliances are more efficient and that our Furnace/AC is of better quality. Perhaps we're just getting lucky. Who knows? All that really matters to me is that it just simply isn't dramatically more expensive for us, if it's more expensive at all.

Probably better not to question it. The last thing you want is to find out that you have been undercharged or your neighbor has been paying your bill.

[Orangetj]

Ha ha! That would be funny! Actually, before we bought our house I asked the guy next door if he wouldn't mind giving me an idea of how much his utility costs were since I had heard so much about the extreme expense of PG&E in EDH. Granted, this was a year ago but what he told me at the time mirrors my experiences since then - $90 or so a month Fall/Spring and $150 to $200 or so Winter/Summer. Perhaps it's the neighbor on the other side who is paying part of BOTH of our bills! I've been wondering what that heavy electric cable is that runs between our three houses.......