Most apartments don't have individual meters. We're dealing with water usage issues at my HOA. The complex has one meter so there is no way to monitor individual usage. Putting in individual meters has been looked into but it's quite expensive.

Hey most of the city of Sacramento doesn't even have water meters at all. http://www.npr.org/2014/06/26/325760...ave-more-water

I don't either and it is ridiculous the amount of money I am charged per month on my water bill.

Our complex divvies the water bill up based on # of bedrooms. Which kind of isn't fair since Lani and I have a two bedroom with two people (and we do 50% of our showering at the gym) while the family across the hall has two bedroom and four people.

I don't care enough to complain about it but it seems an odd way to do it.

Oddly, at work, our electric rate is determined by the spike demand level each day. So when we start up our large press and it happens to occur at the same time the AC system kicks on, that is considered our power use rate for the day and that is what we are charged on (the whole day is charged at the usage rate of the spike).

Still shaking my head over that one

Seems like a good way to encourage better distribution of power usage to avoid peak-load on the infrastructure.

Not practical. It would be akin to telling a taxi driver to only drive when the traffic is the lightest.

The press runs 24 hours a day and by nature is regularly starting and stopping (it has to stop to change jobs, which can be from 3X to 20X or more per day).

Besides, it wouldn't make a difference when we put the peak load on: even if it was 3:00 in the morning, that spike would still be the rate our entire day would be based on.

The power company's would argue that, they must generate enough electricity to meet the spikes in your usage otherwise the local grid would come down whenever you hit one of your spikes which would probably be unacceptable to you and your neighbors. It's still difficult to store electricity with the current grid architecture.

Sooo...

We dropped Headliner off at College last weekend. So far this week, she has setup her Dorm room, written her first essay, picked up all her text books, made a dozen new friends, went through formal rush (which apparently is a really big deal in Texas), oh and got a paying intern job in her field of study. Girl is tearing it up and classes don't start for another week.

If she really picked up all of her books she's off to a bad start. Never buy your books before week 5 only after a class has proven it will actually make use of them and you haven't found a readily available alternative.

You end up never buying 80% of the books and the rest goes towards what college is really for: Spending all your excess money on stupid stuff.

Very nice, Moonie! Headliner is just embarking on a new and exciting portion of life that most look fondly upon for the rest of their lives! And may it go exceptionally well!!
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