Utilities

Sandra,

Check out the cost-of-living section on the main site -- it has a wealth of info about various costs, and I'm pretty sure it lists almost everything you've asked plus. You can find it at:

http://vimovingcenter.com/cost_of_living/

There are no natural gas lines on island (at least that's what I've been told), so gas cooking and hot water run on propane. We had a large (4-5' tall) propane tank filled for $65 -- they came to our home for that price.

Water for most houses is free, compliments of mother nature. Most island homes are built with a cistern to collect the wonderfully clean rainwater, although there is limited city water service forpeople living near the hearts of Fsted and C'sted. A lot of people, including me, use their cistern water for everything, including drinking and cooking. We were initially freaked about the thought of this, and were worried that having a cistern would require a ton of upkeep. We love the taste and feel of the water, and haven't needed to do a thing to keep the cistern water pure.

Should you run out of cistern water, you can buy water from a tanker truck. We've never had to resort to that as we've not even come close to draining our 25,000 gallon cistern becausewepractice good water conservation habits ("navy" showers, not running the water while brushing teeth and washing up -- but I just can't bring myself to follow the island custom of "if it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down). Prices for water delivery are included on the cost-of-living page.

Cable through Innovative is very affordable compared to where we came from. They do have some weird billing practices that were new to me, though. In addition to billing for the cable package (about $70/month for digital service that includes about 65 channels of basic/basic plus music channels and all premium movie channels except Starz and Encore), they also charge a monthly rental fee of about $7 for each digital converter, and there's a couple dollar monthly fee for each cable outlet in your home -- even if you don't use them! You are required to buy the remote. We have four converters in our home and pay about $87 a month for the whole deal. There are cheaper packages and another provider available.

Electricity is expensive. We (two adults) are almost always home, so our costs may be higher than those folks who are out of the house to work part of the time. Our electricity use comes from computers running full time, plus a television and/or stereo, a fridge, a stand-up freezer, washer, dryer that is almost never used, hot water heater and water pump, five ceiling fans that are on 24/7 and two more that run when we are using the bathrooms, a small drinking fountain for our cats, and a wheelchair battery charger. At night, we usually keep on one light with a 40 watt bulb and another with a 3 way energy efficient bulb, plus motion detector lights for our property. I don't think this sounds like much, yet our bills average $250 per month. Turning off ceiling fans didn't affect the billing one bit.

Trash pick up -- we have a 95 gallon can from VI Waste Management for $26/MONTH. They pick up twice a week (they've been really screwed up lately, though) and will take anything that fits in that large can. There isn't any recycling here.

Basic land line phone service from Innovative with no frills like call waiting is about $23 per month.

Gas on STX is way cheaper than on STT. It's currently $2.25 TO $2.29 a gallon.

Hope that helps you!

--HC