Electricity Leaching?

RileyMN

I am not an electrician but would like some of your professional opinions. I live in an old farm house built in 1921. I would geuss the house was wired in the mid to late 30's or maybe early 40's according to an old farmer that's been around here since the beginning of time. I am not 100% sure. Some of my wiring is the old cloth coated (?) wire and 35% or so is modern. The house is a 1 1/2 story about 1100 sq ft total. I also have a couple of barns and a detached garage. My electric bill is always around $185 to $210 or so. For trying to keep the bill down by trying not to leave things on or running I have always thought the bill was high. People in my rural farm area that I have talked to about it have showed me their bills and many of them have lower bills. I turned off all the breakers to buildings I am not using. I had a guy out from the electric co. (REA) and he said he could not find any unusual contributors to a high bill. One thing the electric co. guy did say, but did not go into, was electricity leaching from somewhere. He then told me he was only responsible from the main line on the road to my pole, and then he quickly drove away. Is it possible to have leaching electricity? Can stray current be traced underground or elsewhere? Could an old buried line to an old stock tank heater or grain bin be hot? Forgive me if I sound stupid. After reading all this I am beginning to wonder myself. Any help or suggesstions would be appreciated.

Thanks
Riley

1mancrew

A lot of things could be causing a higher electic bill. For example...your refrigerator compressor could be nearing the end of it's life and starting to draw more amps or could be that the elements in your water heater are starting to go and bleeding current. What I would suggest is have an electrician come out and check the amperage draw on all of your circuits to see if he can find "if" you really have a problem. Or if you feel comfortable you could test them yourself with a clamp type amp meter. I found a stock picture in case you never seen one. If your not comfortable being in your breaker box "DO NOT HANDLE THIS YOURSELF".

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neolitic

You do know that all of those
things with a remote are never
really "off," right?
And all of those little chargers
left plugged in are drawing current,
and so on.....

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Static Design

Get an amp meter and check what each wire in your box is drawing. My guess would be old hvac, old dryer, and an out dated water heater.
My meter of choice: is a fluke.

mrmike

An Ammeter will only be usefull to find something "leaching" if you are 100% sure everything is off in the house and outbuildings. You would then need a pretty good Ammeter that has small tolerance to detect even minuet current draw that can add up after a month. Then if you find one of the circuits shows current draw-you can go searching.
On the other hand if you want to find out if something is drawing more current that it should, you will have to know what the FLA (full load amps) is for that appliance.
Also loose connections especially at your service panel or 240v appliances can also cause "leaching". Do you have a shallow well pump & is it wired for 220v? If you do does it run alot? Short cycling of one can add up in a months time. Another is as someone else stated is your water heater if it is electric.
As you can see there are many factors that could possible keeping your bill high. Maybe it would be worth it to you to hire a good experianced electrician in your area to come & check everything out..... Hope this helps........

wirenut1110

I'm kinda wondering as to how this could or couldn't be an issue. Could you explain?

mrmike

Wirenut, If a shallow well pump is a 110v/220v motor, it would be much more efficient wired at 220 volt as it would only use half the amperage to run. You can check the motor plate to verify this. It may also show you the connections for either one or it may be on the plate to the connections and it is an easy changever with just a double pole breaker in the panel.
So the issue would be that it costs more to run at 110 volts & thats why I threw that in there.

thom

Of course there is an easier way that requires no equipment.

Turn off all your breakers, check the meter, it shouldn't be turning. Then turn on each breaker, one at a time, in succession while checking to see if the meter is turning. When you find the meter turning start disconnecting things on that circuit until the meter stops turning. Eventually you will determine if you have a real problem or not.

Some circuits will draw power when everything is off. All those led clocks and your smoke detectors draw small amounts of power. Your tv will draw power when it's off. Your furnace will draw a small amount of power running the transformer that runs the t-stat. Your doorbell transformer will draw a small amount of power. There are a variety of remote control things (X-10) that will always be drawing a small amount of power.

All that small stuff draws tiny amounts of power that may not be obvious when looking at the meter and should have minimal effect on your bill.

Good luck.

Leo G

Watts is watts. 120vac at 10 amps is ths same as 240 at 5 amps. No power difference. The only real advantage you get is smaller conductor sizes. If there is an efficiency difference it is in the tenths of a percentage and really wouldn't matter.

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wirenut1110

I was afraid this is why you said this. A motor that pulls, lets say 6 amps at 240 volts and 12 amps at 120 is consuming the same amount of power.

12X120=1440 watts, 6X240=1440 watts.

mrmike

Yes, you are correct. P= E x I , so theoretically they draw the same amount of power, but the 220v will be more efficient as the start-up surge loss will be less as the motor will get up to speed quicker. There will be less of a voltage drop with the 220 also, so there will be less energy loss. To be honest I don't really remember the power factor formulas but I would definatly have it hooked up to 220v.

I just used this for an example & hope we didn't confuse the guy with the farmhouse.....

woodchuck2

As everyone has stated you should test amp draw on all your appliances, any pumps, heaters and even some of the lighting if need be. Older appliances of course will not be as efficient as newer models, a leaky pipe somewhere may have your pump or pumps cycling more than they should, you may have an electric line going to an outbuilding that you dont know about, could be heat tapes on some of your plumbing causing excessive draw or heat tapes that you dont know about. How many fridges/freezers do you have? We have 2 fridges and 1 stand up freezer that use up some juice so we have a higher than normal bill.