Exterior

With the warm weather well and truly upon us, I expect Ryan Homes will shortly be coming back to our home to work on the exterior. Our project manager promised to have everything pressure washed (lots of filth left over from construction). We have many areas that need painting, including all the shutters and columns.

Our package included having sod put down over the entire yard (although our lot isn't very large), but before that happens we are trying to work something out whereby rainwater from some of our downspouts can drain into a pipe buried underneath the yard. At the moment, the water pools near our garage and also flows between the garage and the morning room. Since we are planning to put a patio in this area, we want to make sure rainwater doesn't screw it up.

With all this happening imminently, I suppose it is almost time for me to go out and buy a bunch of hoses and sprinklers. I contacted Pennsylvania American Water about trying to make sure we don't pay sewer charges for water used for irrigation, but they basically said they would only be able to make a small deduction for one month only. Greedy bastards.

Utility bills

I'm sure prospective buyers are interested in how much the utility bills are, so I thought I'd blog about mine. I imagine a few existing Ryan Homes owners will be interested in comparing as well. We get our gas and electricity from PECO and our water and sewer from Pennsylvania American Water. For February, the bills came in as follows:

• PECO Gas: $160
• PECO Electricity: $100
• PAW Water: $30
• PAW Sewer: $55

First of all, it is worth bearing in mind that the Michener II is a fairly big house with over 3,000 square feet in our configuration. On the flip side, it has been a very mild winter thus far. The gas bill seems rather high, but part of the problem is that I work at home so we have the heating running most of the time. We've shut off a few vents for areas we don't frequent (like the basement), but it is still higher than we'd like. Electricity is a little lower than I expected. Water seems reasonable, but I was very surprised that the sewer bill was almost double the water bill. I'd be interested to hear about what other people are paying for their sewer service, particularly the ratio between water and sewer costs.