The first winter bill from Avista Utilities jumps because your home is now paying to stay warm, and heating is the biggest energy job most houses have. The size of the jump is the useful part. Compare your winter usage with a mild month, and a very large gap points to heat escaping through the attic, walls and air leaks.
Across Spokane, Spokane Valley, Coeur d'Alene and Post Falls, furnaces, heat pumps and baseboard heaters settle in for the long haul in November. The bill that arrives after the first cold weeks is the first honest look at how well your house holds heat, and for many homeowners in Hayden, Rathdrum or North Spokane it comes as a surprise.
A big number on the bill does not automatically mean something is wrong. But if you know how to read it, that bill can tell you a lot about your home before the coldest months arrive.
Why does the bill climb so much once the heat comes on?
Heating is a huge share of what a home uses. The U.S. Energy Information Administration found that space heating and air conditioning together made up 52 percent of household energy use in 2020. In a cold-winter place like ours, heating carries most of that load.
The National Weather Service puts normal annual heating degree days at the Spokane Airport at 6,463. Heating degree days are a way of measuring how cold the weather is and how much heating it calls for, and almost none of them fall in summer. So a summer bill reflects your home's everyday use, while a winter bill adds the cost of replacing all the heat that leaks out of the house, day and night.
Shorter days add a little more too: lights stay on longer, and people spend more time indoors. Those changes are real, but in most homes they are small compared with heating.
How do you compare winter usage with summer usage?
The trick is to read usage before you look at the total. Prices, fees and billing periods can all change, which makes the bottom line a poor yardstick. Usage, measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh) for electricity or therms for natural gas, tells you how much energy your house actually used.
- Find your usage history. Most bills include a monthly usage graph or table of past months, and your online account usually shows the same history in more detail.
- Pick a baseline month. Choose a mild month when you were not heating or cooling much, such as late spring or early fall.
- Adjust for the number of days. Billing periods vary in length, so divide each month's usage by the days in that period to get a daily average.
- Compare daily winter usage with daily baseline usage. The difference is roughly what your home spends on heat.
- Compare with the same month last year. If this November used much more than last November, something changed: the weather, your habits or the house.
If your bill shows an average outdoor temperature for the period, note it. A colder billing period will naturally use more heat, so a fair comparison takes the weather into account.
What does a big jump say about your home?
Every house uses more energy in winter. What matters is how much more. When winter usage is many times your baseline, or when it climbs sharply with each cold snap, the house is likely losing heat faster than it should.
In an older home, that heat usually escapes in a few predictable places:
- The attic. Warm air rises, and a thin or patchy attic lets heat pour out through the ceiling. ENERGY STAR recommends R-60 for an uninsulated attic in Climate Zone 5, or R-49 when adding to 3 to 4 inches already there.
- Empty or settled walls. Many homes built before 1980 have little or no insulation in the exterior walls, so every outside wall is losing heat all winter.
- Air leaks. Gaps around recessed lights, plumbing stacks, chimney chases, the attic hatch and the tops of interior walls let heated air escape into the attic. The house replaces it by pulling cold air in through doors, outlets and baseboards.
- Leaky ducts. ENERGY STAR estimates that about 20 to 30 percent of the air moving through a typical duct system is lost to leaks, holes and poorly connected ducts. Ducts in an attic, garage or other unheated space are worth a look by an HVAC professional.
If your usage spike lines up with cold rooms, drafts or an upstairs that never feels right, those clues usually point to the same leaks.
What else can push a winter bill up?
To be fair to your house, a few things besides heat loss can raise a winter bill. Rule these out before you draw conclusions.
- A longer billing period. A few extra days can add noticeably to the total.
- A colder month. An early cold snap or a long stretch of gray inversion weather means more heating, even in a well-insulated home.
- Thermostat changes. A higher setting, or no more nighttime setback, adds up over a month.
- Space heaters. Electric space heaters use a lot of power and can drive up an electric bill quickly.
- More time at home. Holidays, guests or a new work-from-home schedule all add use.
- Equipment problems. A furnace or heat pump that is struggling, or a heat pump relying heavily on backup heat, can use more energy. That is a job for an HVAC professional.
- An estimated meter read. If the bill was estimated, the next one may correct it up or down.
If none of these explain the jump, the house itself is the most likely place to look.
Does it matter whether you heat with electricity or gas?
It changes what you read. If you heat with natural gas, your gas usage in therms tells the heating story, and your electric usage will rise only a little from the furnace fan and longer evenings. If you heat with electricity, whether a heat pump, an electric furnace or baseboard heat, your kWh will carry the whole winter jump.
You will find both kinds of heat on both sides of the state line, from Cheney to Athol. Either way, the comparison works the same: winter daily usage against a mild-month baseline.
Why does the Inland Northwest make the first bill such a good test?
The U.S. Department of Energy places Spokane County and Kootenai County in Climate Zone 5, with cold winters and a long heating season. November is usually the first full month when heat runs most of the day, so the first winter bill is a clean read on how your house performs before deep cold arrives.
Late fall can also bring valley inversions, when cold air settles under warmer air aloft and the area sits under low cloud for days. With little sun to help, the house leans almost entirely on the heating system, and any weakness in the attic or walls shows up in usage. A drafty older home in the Perry District or Midtown Coeur d'Alene will usually feel those gray stretches in the bill.
Checklist: what to look at on your first winter bill
- Usage in kWh or therms. Prices and fees change, so the units you used tell the real story.
- Days in the billing period. A longer period uses more, so compare daily averages.
- Average temperature for the period. A colder month will naturally use more heat.
- Same month last year. A big change from last November points to something new.
- Your mild-month baseline. The gap between baseline and winter is roughly your heating use.
- Actual or estimated read. An estimated read can make one month look higher or lower than reality.
- Which fuel jumped. Gas heat shows up in therms and electric heat in kWh, so read the right line.
- Cold rooms and drafts. If the bill spike matches uncomfortable rooms, heat loss is the likely link.
What can bring the winter number down?
Once you know the house is the issue, the fixes are well understood. Attic Air Sealing closes the gaps that let warm air escape upward. Blown-In Attic Insulation brings the attic up to the recommended depth. Premium Injection Wall Foam fills closed exterior walls from the outside through small access holes, without removing interior drywall or plaster.
ENERGY STAR estimates that homeowners can save an average of 15 percent on heating and cooling costs by air sealing and adding insulation in attics, floors over crawl spaces and accessible basement rim joists. Results vary from home to home, which is why a look at your actual house matters more than any average.
USA Insulation of Spokane-CDA is an approved installer in Avista Utilities' Home Insulation Program, and eligible homes may qualify for program support on an insulation upgrade. We check eligibility during your estimate. Program details are set by Avista Utilities and can change.
Bring the bill to the conversation
Your first winter bill is one of the best clues you will get about how your home holds heat. Book a free inspection with USA Insulation of Spokane-CDA and bring your recent bills, and we will measure your walls and attic, take photos of what we find and give you a written price for the upgrades that fit your home.
