MacInsiders Logo

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Horizon Utilities Question ShouldBeStudying Off-Campus Housing (SOCS) 3 09-09-2010 10:16 PM
Horizon Utilities ShouldBeStudying Off-Campus Housing (SOCS) 12 05-03-2010 03:16 PM
Utilities mike_302 Off-Campus Housing (SOCS) 10 01-10-2010 08:49 PM

Cost of Utilities

 
Old 07-24-2010 at 01:54 AM   #1
cywhiz
Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 10

Thanked: 0 Times
Liked: 0 Times




Cost of Utilities
I'm coming to McMaster in September and I'm going to be living off campus for the very first time...

On average, how much do you guys pay for gas, hydro/electricity, and Internet per month, if shared by 5-6 people? I understand it really depends on the group of people using it, but I just want a general idea. I am not a heavy user, so I don't know whether or not I should get something with utilities all included.

Also, does anyone have any recommendations on a nice area to stay in (within 5-10 walk to campus)? Thanks a lot!
Old 07-24-2010 at 02:33 AM   #2
dsahota
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 290

Thanked: 84 Times
Liked: 83 Times




Internet: If with a company like teksavvy, which has a bandwidth cap of 200 GB or unlimited per month, then $40 total per month. Cogeco / Bell can easily end up as $80-100 / month as people tend to go over the bandwidth caps.

Gas: Completely depends on the house, expect an average of $100-$150 total / month. Nearing $200 avg / month is possible if the house is poorly insulated and people keep the heat up high. Pretty much independent of the number of people.

Electricity (provided by Horizon): $100-150 total / month. Electricity rates have risen a lot this year, combined with HST this may be a bit of an underestimate. Lots of lighting being left on (especially if they're halogen or incandescent bulbs), AC, old refridgerators / freezers and high use of the dryer can push the bill up quickly. Electricity usage scales up with number of people, but there is a significant base amount, as well. There's also now time of use pricing in Hamilton, so at peak times the cost of electricity is almost double that of off-peak times. Most student houses should expect a 10-20% jump in their electricity costs for this coming year because of the rate and HST changes.
Info on time of use pricing: http://www.horizonutilities. com/HH...u/tou_home.jsp

Water / Sewer (provided by Horizon): Scales almost linearly with # of people. $10-20 / month per person. Leaky toilets, taps and long showers significantly affect this. It costs ~$2.25 / 1000 litres of water.

In short form: a reasonable budget would be $75 / month ($10 internet, $30 gas, $20 hydro, $15 water / sewer), but you may want to be a little safe and be prepared to be $80-90 / month. If you end up in an efficient house, it could be as low as $50-60 / month.

At my place we've spent a fair bit trying to be efficient, so there's only CFL's for lighting, low-flow everything, and plastic films over all the windows during the winter. We also use a programmable thermostat to turn the heat way down during the school day. With that being done for 4 people the monthly amounts are:
$80 gas
$35 water / sewer
$125 hydro (we have AC + my loft is electric heating only in the winter)

This works out to $60 and change per month, plus cable and internet (which is an extra $30 / each because we have an HDTV box and cogeco internet).

cywhiz, MacPack all say thanks to dsahota for this post.
Old 07-27-2010 at 02:37 AM   #3
cywhiz
Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 10

Thanked: 0 Times
Liked: 0 Times




Hey dsahota...Thanks so much for the detailed info. It helped a lot! =)

I went to look for a few houses yesterday. You were right. In one of the houses, there are 6 people in total. I asked a person living there and he said it is "about" $60/month per person for all utilities, Internet/cable extra.

I guess in most cases, it is better to pay utilities extra. However, I am little worried about nagging my roommates to pay the bills...

Just wondering, do you have any difficulties managing bills and dividing up the costs?
Old 07-27-2010 at 02:57 AM   #4
dsahota
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 290

Thanked: 84 Times
Liked: 83 Times




I haven't had any trouble with my roommates and collecting money (we're all grad students), but I have heard many stories of other students having to run after their roommates for bills.

You may want to ask about the arrangements they have for paying the bills, some people agree that everyone puts in a set amount per month and then at the end of a year or semester everything gets tabulated. If done properly (i.e. with a bit of a cushion) then everyone gets a little bit of a refund.

Of course the easiest is if the utilities are just included in the rental cost, then its the landlords problem to run after people for cheques .
Old 07-27-2010 at 03:34 AM   #5
ingénieur.xo
Elite Member
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 495

Thanked: 54 Times
Liked: 38 Times




Personally I would say try and find a place where the utilities are included. The only reason I say this is because I've done both (included and not included) and when it wasn't included my roommate tried to make me pay them whenever they got a refund for something that we had both put equal money into. It's just easier if the landlord is the one who has to deal with all that stuff. Also if something is wrong with any of the utilities then you don't have to deal with calling up the company, I've had problems with companies customer service before as well.
It probably is a bit cheaper though to go with paying it on your own, so if money's an issue than try it out. If not then find a place that has it included.
__________________
Alyssa Brière
Materials Engineering and Society IV
Minor in French


MacPack says thanks to ingénieur.xo for this post.
Old 08-23-2010 at 10:44 PM   #6
belindz!
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 275

Thanked: 2 Times
Liked: 17 Times




I have a question about splitting the cost on internet. I recently signed a contract w/ rogers ( i have a internet stick thing) and I was wondering if it is absolutely necessary that i split the internet bill with my roommates? There are si others but i feel that i shouldnt have to pay for internet that i dont plan on ever using since i have my own.
Old 08-23-2010 at 10:54 PM   #7
jhan523
Moderator
MacInsiders Staff
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 12,484

Thanked: 1,629 Times
Liked: 604 Times




Quote:
Originally Posted by belindz! View Post
I have a question about splitting the cost on internet. I recently signed a contract w/ rogers ( i have a internet stick thing) and I was wondering if it is absolutely necessary that i split the internet bill with my roommates? There are si others but i feel that i shouldnt have to pay for internet that i dont plan on ever using since i have my own.
That's something you have to discuss with your roommates. Tell them to put a password on the internet if they don't trust you. They SHOULD password protect their router anyways, otherwise your neighbours can steal your bandwidth.

But I agree, you shouldn't have to pay for internet you don't use.
__________________
Jeremy Han
McMaster Alumni - Honours Molecular Biology and Genetics
Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University Third Year - Doctor of Optometry

belindz! says thanks to jhan523 for this post.
Old 08-23-2010 at 11:19 PM   #8
nerual
Account Disabled by User
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 2,392

Thanked: 347 Times
Liked: 345 Times




Quote:
Originally Posted by belindz! View Post
I have a question about splitting the cost on internet. I recently signed a contract w/ rogers ( i have a internet stick thing) and I was wondering if it is absolutely necessary that i split the internet bill with my roommates? There are si others but i feel that i shouldnt have to pay for internet that i dont plan on ever using since i have my own.
Don't split it with your housemates unless you know/trust them...and even then, it can be sketchy. If you're going to split it, I'd recommend downloading a program to monitor your bandwidth usage. We had a problem with one person in our house using waaaaaaay more bandwidth than she was supposed to and she kept causing us to go over and insisting it wasn't her/refusing to pay for it...except, there was insane usage on days when the rest of us were all home for the weekend, or away visiting friends, etc and couldn't have used it. So now, we've ended up paying so much extra money because she kept using up all of the bandwidth. She moved out on the 14th of this month for good, but not before using up 97% of our internet for August. It's definitely not worth the hassle, and after this, if she hadn't moved out we would have told her to get her own internet.

belindz! says thanks to nerual for this post.
Old 08-23-2010 at 11:21 PM   #9
jhan523
Moderator
MacInsiders Staff
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 12,484

Thanked: 1,629 Times
Liked: 604 Times




Quote:
Originally Posted by nerual View Post
Don't split it with your housemates unless you know/trust them...and even then, it can be sketchy. If you're going to split it, I'd recommend downloading a program to monitor your bandwidth usage. We had a problem with one person in our house using waaaaaaay more bandwidth than she was supposed to and she kept causing us to go over and insisting it wasn't her/refusing to pay for it...except, there was insane usage on days when the rest of us were all home for the weekend, or away visiting friends, etc and couldn't have used it. So now, we've ended up paying so much extra money because she kept using up all of the bandwidth. She moved out on the 14th of this month for good, but not before using up 97% of our internet for August. It's definitely not worth the hassle, and after this, if she hadn't moved out we would have told her to get her own internet.
I think the poster was saying that they didn't want to split the internet bill because they got their own internet.
__________________
Jeremy Han
McMaster Alumni - Honours Molecular Biology and Genetics
Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University Third Year - Doctor of Optometry
Old 08-23-2010 at 11:40 PM   #10
Ownaginatios
Trolling ain't easy
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 3,190

Thanked: 499 Times
Liked: 1,642 Times




Quote:
Originally Posted by nerual View Post
If you're going to split it, I'd recommend downloading a program to monitor your bandwidth usage.
Err... it's not that simple. You need to know how much of the traffic coming in from the router is go to each computer, and how much is leaving each computer.

The only way to do this is to have the router tell you. I had the same issue (this dipshit living in my house that downloaded super HD **** and killed our connection). What I did was had the router send a small log of all the incoming and outgoing traffic for each computer on the network to my computer on each half hour, where it was then broken down and summed with the previous logs and put nicely into a webpage showing the usage for each person.

Rather than accusing him though, I just simply turned off his internet connection from time to time through the router and claimed that the internet was down. It was fun

...

In other news, I think it should be required that everyone go through some sort of how a computer/the internet works course. It's really annoying how most people just assume the internet connection is infinite...
__________________
Dillon Dixon
Alumni
Software Engineering and Embedded Systems
Old 08-23-2010 at 11:44 PM   #11
jhan523
Moderator
MacInsiders Staff
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 12,484

Thanked: 1,629 Times
Liked: 604 Times




Quote:
Originally Posted by Ownaginatios View Post
Err... it's not that simple. You need to know how much of the traffic coming in from the router is go to each computer, and how much is leaving each computer.

The only way to do this is to have the router tell you. I had the same issue (this dipshit living in my house that downloaded super HD **** and killed our connection). What I did was had the router send a small log of all the incoming and outgoing traffic for each computer on the network to my computer on each half hour, where it was then broken down and summed with the previous logs and put nicely into a webpage showing the usage for each person.

Rather than accusing him though, I just simply turned off his internet connection from time to time through the router and claimed that the internet was down. It was fun

...

In other news, I think it should be required that everyone go through some sort of how a computer/the internet works course. It's really annoying how most people just assume the internet connection is infinite...
That would actually make it possible to divide the bill by internet usage... But sounds really complicated Lol
__________________
Jeremy Han
McMaster Alumni - Honours Molecular Biology and Genetics
Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University Third Year - Doctor of Optometry
Old 08-23-2010 at 11:48 PM   #12
nerual
Account Disabled by User
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 2,392

Thanked: 347 Times
Liked: 345 Times




Quote:
Originally Posted by Ownaginatios View Post
Err... it's not that simple. You need to know how much of the traffic coming in from the router is go to each computer, and how much is leaving each computer.

The only way to do this is to have the router tell you. I had the same issue (this dipshit living in my house that downloaded super HD **** and killed our connection). What I did was had the router send a small log of all the incoming and outgoing traffic for each computer on the network to my computer on each half hour, where it was then broken down and summed with the previous logs and put nicely into a webpage showing the usage for each person.

Rather than accusing him though, I just simply turned off his internet connection from time to time through the router and claimed that the internet was down. It was fun

...

In other news, I think it should be required that everyone go through some sort of how a computer/the internet works course. It's really annoying how some people just assume the internet connection is infinite...
Hm...I have a program that summarizes how much I download/upload from the internet. I'm not sure how accurate it is (I haven't checked it against the cogeco statements), but I assume/hope it gives a relatively accurate picture.

haha the joys of being in software engineering I'm relatively electronics-challenged...the most I ever did was turn off the modem when no one else was in the house It's not even a course that's necessary. All people need to know is: internet isn't free or unlimited. Some things use a lot of bandwidth, and it's pretty much all of the things you'd expect (online gaming, downloading, Skype, etc). So, when you're told that you've used up 90% of the internet for the month and it's only the 13th, you should NOT have an hour-long Skype convo. End of story.

As a side note, how did you get the router to send a log to your computer?

Quote:
Originally Posted by jhan523
I think the poster was saying that they didn't want to split the internet bill because they got their own internet.

Yes...and it's way more of a hassle than it's worth to split, you're definitely better off with your own.
Old 08-23-2010 at 11:55 PM   #13
jhan523
Moderator
MacInsiders Staff
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 12,484

Thanked: 1,629 Times
Liked: 604 Times




Quote:
Originally Posted by nerual View Post
Yes...and it's way more of a hassle than it's worth to split, you're definitely better off with your own.
Definitively, especially if the house isn't a group of friends.
__________________
Jeremy Han
McMaster Alumni - Honours Molecular Biology and Genetics
Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University Third Year - Doctor of Optometry
Old 08-23-2010 at 11:58 PM   #14
nerual
Account Disabled by User
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 2,392

Thanked: 347 Times
Liked: 345 Times




Quote:
Originally Posted by jhan523 View Post
Definitively, especially if the house isn't a group of friends.
Or if you don't want to risk your friendship...I know a house of all friends that had mega issues because of this. I would think it would be easier to talk to the person about it if they're your friend, but it could backfire too, I guess.
The friends I'm living with are all fine with using an appropriate amount of internet though...for us, it was just the one random in the house
It pretty much comes down to whether or not you trust the people you'd be sharing with to not steal from you, and/or to not share your password with people who would use a ton of your bandwidth.
Old 08-24-2010 at 07:58 PM   #15
Ownaginatios
Trolling ain't easy
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 3,190

Thanked: 499 Times
Liked: 1,642 Times




Quote:
Originally Posted by nerual View Post
As a side note, how did you get the router to send a log to your computer?
[/color][/color]
You need a special third party firmware to do it (Tomato or DD-WRT). You need a compatible router. It's not really a human readable log, and requires a program to sort of decipher it. I'm currently trying to make time to write one. It's not really worth the effort for most people :p.

DD-WRT, however, can at least show you in a web-interface where most of the traffic is going to / coming from in real time with percentage bars right out of the box. This is how I figured out who was eating all the internets before that thing I mentioned above.

You can also boost the wireless transmitter on the router way beyond manufacturer specifications with it. I'm pretty sure I jacked it up high enough in the house I lived in in first year to cause cancer (lol, not really... I hope :p).
__________________
Dillon Dixon
Alumni
Software Engineering and Embedded Systems

Last edited by Ownaginatios : 08-24-2010 at 08:00 PM.

nerual says thanks to Ownaginatios for this post.



Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off



McMaster University News and Information, Student-run Community, with topics ranging from Student Life, Advice, News, Events, and General Help.
Notice: The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the student(s) who authored the content. The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by McMaster University or the MSU (McMaster Students Union). Being a student-run community, all articles and discussion posts on MacInsiders are unofficial and it is therefore always recommended that you visit the official McMaster website for the most accurate up-to-date information.

Copyright © MacInsiders.com All Rights Reserved. No content can be re-used or re-published without permission. MacInsiders is a service of Fullerton Media Inc. | Created by Chad
Originally Powered by vBulletin®, Copyright © 2019 MH Sub I, LLC dba vBulletin. All rights reserved. | Privacy | Terms