Communal Electricity Charges

We are in a block of 8 apartments. We have a garage each in the basement. There is only one electric meter for all the garages.The community divides the bill 8 ways but has no rules to limit the private use within the garages. People have all sorts of permanently plugged in appliances in their garages. I have none so I am paying their bills for them. No one in the Community is interested in changing this unfair situation. Suggestions please.

What kind of appliances could be permanantly plugged-in in a garage?

I would suggest that the actual electricity cost would be minimal and by far the greater amount would be the standing charges, tax etc. 

Steve

Freezers use alot of electricity in hot countries 

The appliances permantly plugged in are chest freezers & fridge freezers. Someone has a bank of computers they work on 8 hours a day 365 days a year. All my research tells me that electricity cost is all about how many hours thngs are plugged in for not what their power rating is.

Some of the bill goes towards genuine community electric as the garages hae a centrally lit area with stairs etc but it isn´t possible to seperate the bill.

If you accidentally trip the power every now and then you might discourage the freezer users.

Moules The community divides the bill 8 ways but has no rules to limit the private use within the garages. People have all sorts of permanently plugged in appliances in their garages

No rules, so unless you can get the community to vote a change on that, . you have no choice but to pay up and smile.

All my research tells me that electricity cost is all about how many hours things are plugged in for not what their power rating is.

The amount of electricity consumed is what the rating is (how many Kilowatts per hour) multiplied by the time they are consuming electricity.   Thus a  3 bar electric fire will normally consume 3 kilowatts per hour: a 100w bulb 10 hours = I KW  (1,000 divided by 100)

If all other party's are happy with the 8 way split on the bill...you could be making trouble for yourself if you complained if l was you I would get my fair share of the community electricity ..and buy a freezer for the garage happy days problem solved ..( l wonder how much your share of the bill is)... taking into account the standing charge.

Along the same lines, some years ago I was the president of a community of 20 homes, Most were Spanish owned. The water supply was through one meter. The bill was divided by 20, but that meant the actual cost was considerably more than it would have been with each one of us having our own meter.

It took a while for me to convince the Spanish owners that separate meters would be cheaper.

When eventually the meters were installed,  only a couple of neighbours had the good grace to thank me and agree their bills were about 5% of what they had been

So maybe Moules if you keeping trying you may succeed

John I would have thought that the water would have been cheaper for some and more expensive for others That's why only two thanked you In our comunidad the water is metered as a whole and shared in the community charge Most apartments are only occupied in the summer So residents like myself benefit from the charges being split equally 

I´ve aske a lawyer informally about it. She said it wasn´t uncommon. Said usually there is  rule saying noplugged in appliances & they scuritinise the bills carefully or they have a rule that those without appliances get a % refund.My lot aren´t interested.

It seems daft to me that when we are asked for extra community funds for decorating etc that they can´t see that those funds have already been spent on private non communal electric use

scuba    John I would have thought that the water would have been cheaper for some and more expensive for others

I did not want to explain the whole thing but:-

The initial water supply was a continuation of the water supplied to the builder for building the properties. That is charged at higher rate than domestic water.

 Also with a domestic supply (in our town) the first 20 cu metres per bill are very cheap and then price increases gradually.

With the initial supply there was no cheap fist amount, however, with each of us having our own meter we each had 20 cu metres per quarter at the very low rate.

It meant that even the largest users' new bills were about 5% of what each of us was paying when the one bill was divided between