Average Gas Bill For 1-Bedroom Apartment: State-By-State Cost Analysis

Gas for a 1-bedroom apartment shouldn’t cost all that much. We wanted to take a look at what is the typical gas bill for a 1-bedroom apartment. To calculate that as accurately as possible, we used the last released RECS data to estimate the average gas bill for a 1-bedroom apartment (US average, and state-by-state averages summarized in the chart further on).

In a 1-bedroom apartment, natural gas is used for various applications, including space heating (primarily gas guzzler, which accounts for 60-90% of gas costs), water heating, cooking, and so on. To adequately calculate the average gas bill for a one-bedroom apartment, we have to take a look at all the gas bills paid for all 1-bedroom flats in the US.

Luckily, we can do that. The US Energy Information Agency (EIA) releases energy consumption data (including gas consumption and expenditure) in their Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) datasets. These datasets – gathered in more than 89 Excel sheets here – are a compilation of all the energy bills paid by US households.

Here are a few insights we were able to calculate from this data:

• In total, we spend $40.89 billion on natural gas for all households annually.
• 1-bedroom apartments that pay the highest monthly gas bills are located in the Northwest region (in states like New York, Illinois, and Minnesota the 1-bedroom apartment monthly bill is 20.9% above the national average). This is because 80.1% of gas is used solemnly on gas heating in the winter.
• 1-bedroom apartments that pay the lowest monthly gas bills are located in the West region (in states like California, Oregon, and Nevada the 1-bedroom apartment monthly bill is 23.5% below the US average. A significantly lower percentage of gas – 63.6% on average – is used for gas heating in the winter.
• Due to the large percentage of gas usage being used for heating, it is not uncommon to see a 1-bedroom apartment gas bill in the winter spike to around $100/month, while the gas bill for the same apartment in the summer can be lower than $20 per month.

To extract the data that will enable us to calculate the average gas bill for a 1-bedroom apartment state-by-state, we will look at 1-person and 2-person household data. According to the Federal Occupancy Limit (Section 503(b) of the Uniform Housing Code), a maximum of 3 people can live in a 1-bedroom apartment. However, most 1-bedroom apartments are occupied by 1 or 2 people.

If we look at the data gathered by Statista here, the average size of newly built 1-bedroom apartments between 2008 and 2018 ranges between 750 and 800 square feet. This is a predominantly a 2-person household size.

While the average gas usage (therms of gas per month for a 1-bedroom apartment) doesn’t vary all that much state-by-state, the cost of natural gas ($ per therm) varies quite a bit. That’s why we will also try to extract the state-by-state average gas usage for a 1-bedroom apartment from the available RECS data.

Let’s start estimating the normal gas usage for a 1-bedroom apartment by looking at the overall data:

Natural Gas Usage And Cost By 1-Bedroom Apartments (US Totals)

According to the RECS datasheets, there are 118.2 million homes in the US we have gas usage data for. Out of these, there are 28.7 million 1-person households and 42.7 million 2-person households. Here are the US total gas usage data:

• All US homes (118.2 million) use 3,964 billion feet of natural gas annually. According to EIA, 1 therm is equal to 10.37 million cubic feet of gas; so that’s 382,257 million therms per year. The total cost for all this gas is $40.89 billion.

  

• An average 1-person household (28.7 million units) uses 4330 therms of gas per year. That means that the yearly gas bill for a 1-person household is $475, or $39.58 per month.
• An average 2-person household (42.7 million units) uses 5497 therms of gas per year. That means that the yearly gas bill for a 2-person household is $590, or $49.17 per month.

If we average 1-person and 2-person household monthly gas bills, we get the resulting average gas usage for a 1-bedroom apartment like this:

US Average 1-Bedroom Gas Bill = ($39.58 × 28.7 million units + $49.17 × 42.7 million units) / 71.4 million units = $45.32/month

As we can see, an average 1-bedroom gas bill across the United States is $45.32 per month.

Keep in mind that this is the US total average. What we would usually like to know is how much is an average gas bill for a 1-bedroom apartment in New York, California, Texas, and so on.

The RECS datasets sadly don’t offer state-by-state accurate data. However, they do offer regional data for these 4 main regions:

• Northeast region (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania).
• Midwest region (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota).
• South region (Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas).
• West region (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, California, Oregon, and Washington).

Based on these datasets, we can adequately estimate the 1-bedroom apartment’s average monthly gas bills (similar calculation to the US total bills). Here is the full state-by-state 1-bedroom apartment gas bill chart from this data:

State-By-State 1-Bedroom Apartment Monthly Gas Bill Chart

As we can see from this chart, 1-bedroom apartments in West region states like California, Arizona, and Nevada pay the lowest gas bills ($34.67 per month or 23.5% below the US average).

The 1-bedroom apartments with the highest monthly gas bills are located in the Northeast region. In states like New Tork, Pennsylvania, and Illinois the average 1-bedroom apartment gas bill is $54.80 per month (20.9% above the national average).

This difference is the result of gas used for space heating. Namely, the states in the Northeast region use 80.1% of gas for apartment heating, while the states in the West region use a significantly lower percentage for gas heating (63.6%).

It is also very important to note that most of these gas space heating expenses for 1-bedroom apartments happen in 6 colder months (from October to March). Therefore the gas bill you will pay in the winter can be significantly higher than the gas bill paid in the summer. You can look at the therms of gas per month usage in winter here.

All in all, we see that the yearly average gas bill for a 1-bedroom apartment runs in $30s, $40, and $50 per month. In the winter, it is not unusual to pay close to $100 per month for heating a 1-bedroom apartment with gas. On the other hand, the monthly gas costs in the summer can be as low as below $20.

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We hope that this 1-bedroom apartment gas usage analysis on a monthly and yearly basis will give you an insight into what to expect on your monthly gas bill. If you have any questions, you can use the comment section below, give us some numbers, and we can help you out with some estimations.