In early July I installed a 50 gal, 220 V electric hot water heater to save on fuel oil usage since I was on the summer-winter hookup with the furnace. It has worked very well and electrical usage for July '08 was about the same as it was in July '07. Ditto for August '08 and September '08. However, the electric bill for October '08 shows a nearly double increase over October '07. Basically the only change from the previous months is that the furnace had come on at times for heating the house. I'm having a hard time believing the furnace uses that much electric. Is there a way I can check the power usage in the home to determine where all of those extra KW have come from? Before I retired from my maintenance job of 31 years I did a lot of electrical work so I have a background with it.

Hi, I recently moved into a 100 year old house in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. No knob n tube, but in investigating an old "24 hour timer" for the front light, it appears there is no neutral wire present in the box for the front light. The wire that comes into the switch is a really fat wire casing, 3/4inch think or so, and it appears as there is only ONE copper wire within it. It goes into this old canadian tire "timer" thing i can't figure out, so i wanted to replace it. However, it seems this likely can't happen as the neutral likely goes straight to the light and bypasses the switch box - was this common in the past (or now for that matter)? I got a new digital timer switch, but it wants power/neutral/ground. I guess this won't work without significant re-wiring :) Let me know if you have thoughts, thanks, Bob