This forum is dedicated to connecting hosts with other hosts. Sign up to get the latest updates and news just for AirBnb hosts! Note that we are not affiliated with Airbnb - we are just passionate hosts!
To me this is bizarre. We get the odd fire due to living in a very hot and dry region, but for a major utility corporation to be fully aware of the deficiencies in its equipment (for how long?) and not to have had a repair/rectify program running seems crazy. Corporate negligence possibly, although given that their skint I don’t suppose there is any worth in chasing them.
How does this work with your household insurance in respect of freezer contents, would they pay out in the event of a claim?
Sometimes evacuations are ordered because IF the fire changes direction or starts to come close firefighters can deal with fighting the fire rather than saving lives. Always evacuate when ordered to even if you think it is not necessary… let them do their jobs and not make it harder by staying behind.
PGE will not pay out any spoiled food claims because it was a scheduled outage for possible fire safety. Some households are still without power going on 3 days!
They would not compensate for that. In fact, after the Paradise Fire PG&E raised rates on its existing customers to compensate themselves for the loss.
Currently we are on a payment plan because when we began four years ago, our utilities were around $600/month to run our Airbnb. Now it is $1000-$1500/month. We close escrow first week of November. Can not wait to leave PG&E.
Of course we will evacuate if ordered to, RRR. We also have a neighbor / bf who has the direct line to the fire commissioner, and get real time info quickly. The one fatality of the Saddle Ridge fire was someone who had not left, was trying to save his home and got cardiac arrest.
Btw they (SCE) threatened to turn our electrical off, but only did one day before the winds came (for repairs)…
We aren’t leaving California, just moving things from Northern to Southern. So it’ll be SoCal Edison as our utility from now on. But I didn’t know about this exit tax.
OMG! I like my average of about $85-$150 / month even more! And will really like it once I get solar installed this fall. I have another home where the taxes were $1k/month for a while, but dang! That’s some serious utility usage! I think mine averages $0.10-$0.14/kWh. What is yours?
“Customers in Tier 5 currently pay almost 50 cents per kilowatt-hour ( kWh ), compared to 11.9 cents for Tier 1 (baseline) usage. Under PG&E’s new proposal, the top rate that customers would pay—in Tier 3— would be 29.8 cents per kWh”
To remain in Tier 1 is not possible for us given the type of guests we get. Average is 900 kWh monthly usage. And we do charge for much earlier check-in for this reason. We were quoted that getting solar would reduce our monthly bills to around $150 which would have been amazing. Except the quote we got to re-do the roof to have it equipped for solar was around 11K.
In Palm Springs, we were averaging around the same when we started, around $600 through SoCal Edison. When we switched to solar our monthly is a little over $300.
Hypothetically yes, if that was our only major expense. But we had never planned to keep this as a short term rental for the long term (too much maintenance) and will roll over the 700K in equity we gained over four years to get some property more ready to go.
Not to get too off topic, but is this actually true? We’ve been talking to solar companies for our house is in southern CA and they were insinuating that you can in fact sell it back. Essentially your bill is adjusted once per year with SCE and they look at how much you generated vs. how much you used. But maybe I misunderstood the sales guys.
This buy back program ended about two years ago or more. We just get charged overage by SCE once a year now. This is as applied to our situation, which is rented panels on a residential home.
Well it happened. The shutdown has finally touched our home. Our final guests right before the conclusion of escrow. A 5.5K reservation at that. They shut down the power on Saturday, restored it by Monday. But are now threatening to shut it down again on Tuesday (tomorrow).
I don’t understand my guests. I explained to her that we have no electricity, that the highway is closed south of my place. There’s no heat, no refrigerator, no lights.
They came anyway because they are traveling down the coast… I don’t think they understand the stress that comes from staying in our homes right now. I suggested they head inland where there’s power, but they are set on going to another house with no power tomorrow… sigh.
Our guests are contacting us early and we are all hoping for the best. This weekend will be lovely if we don’t burn down on Wed or Thurs. And by then the electricity will be back on too:)
