Posted 23 April
This info is here to help shed some light on the Utilities at Belvedere which includes cold water, sewerage, hot water, gas, electricity, and internet.
All costs provided below are ex-GST
The Internet is provided to the whole building by Opticomm as the wholesaler, but you choose your own Internet retailer to provide your service to your Apartment (eg Aussie Broadband, TPG, IINET, Superloop etc)
The type of Internet installed to your apartment is known as Fibre-To-The-Premises (FTTP) which is the best type you can get.
The level of service you will get will depend on a few things:
Your plan. A 'standard plan' is usually something like 50/20 which means 50Mb download and 20Mb upload which will cost about $80/month. You can get faster and slower plans depending on your needs.
Your provider. Some providers are better than others at providing services. I personally use Aussie Broadband and have found them to be really good.
Your router/Wifi Access Point(WAP). The standard router/WAP supplied by your ISP will do an ok job, but if you are a heavy user with many devices, or need to get signal through solid walls you may need to upgrade to a better more powerful router.
Cold Water is provided by Gold Coast City Council
There is a daily access charge of 79.45 cents per day (average about $24/month)
The usage fee is $1.38 per kL
There is also a State Bulk Water fee of $3.44 per kL
Together this brings the water usage fee to $4.82 per kL
You can monitor you daily use by checking your meter in the hallway.
As a comparison, In Sydney we were paying $16/3months for access charges and $2.67/kL for water. So water in QLD is almost double the price.
NOTE: your lot is metered and billed individually, however there is also a common water charge (for gardens, pool, building cleaning, and hot water system etc) which is charged to the body corporate and paid for by your Admin Fees.
Sewerage is provided by Council
There is a daily access charge of $2.0255 per day (average about $60/month)
Electricity, Hot Water, and Gas are all provided by SUPA Energy which has a 10 year contract to supply the building.
It's important to understand that these services are all billed differently. Use the SUPA website/app to monitor your usage.
Electricity
There is a daily supply charge of 98.33 cents per day (average about $30/month)
The usage fee is 28.69 cents per kWh, which is cheaper than the average price in Queensland of 33cents per kWh.
You can monitor you daily use through SUPA App or website. It is important that if you are disputing your bill that you know your daily usage figures.
The average 2 person home uses about 13-14kWh/day
NOTE: Aircon is the largest consumer of electricity in most homes. These can use more than everything else in your entire home put together. Knowing what is using your electricity is the key to keeping bills under control
Hot water
There is a daily supply charge of 39 cents per day (average about $12/month)
The usage fee is $19.50 cents per kL. Note that this charge is only to heat the water, the water itself is also billed separately (through the common property charges which you pay for through Body Corporate Fees - TBC).
You can monitor you daily use by checking your meter in the hallway.
Gas
Gas is charged at a flat per day rate of 26 cents per day, (average of $8/month)