Like most students i live in a shared house, and we seem to be flying through electricity, as we're on a meter. Does anyone have any tips on lowering our usage, i've tried introducing people sharing the over together, but they moan that i eat to early etc, people having multiple lights and computers on list goes on. Has anyone lived in a shared house and found a none moany way of getting people to think about power usage? ta

You just can't do it really.
Low-energy lightbulbs, turning off appliances at the wall instead of leaving on standby & making sure the heating (if electric) isn't on all the time can help a bit though.

Even if the heating isn't electric it still costs money…

A pre-payment meter focusses the mind, but you get poor value tariffs that way. I think shared bills generally leads to irresponsible usage. Nobody feels they're personally responsible, and seeing others behaving carelessly make people want to "get their money's worth" by doing the same.

You'll find one single individual is sat in his room with 7 electric fires on full blast and a 1000W beat box on full blast pouring scat rap music into a 300 quid pair of headphones all night.

He will be welsh.

He will be welsh

Genius.

i'm known as the "licht nazi" or "light nazi" in this house. i've also fiddled with the boiler so that it can't pump out so much warm water.

the house is over 400 years old. the windows are shit and there is always a draft.

encourage people to wear a jumper and MTFU. i've found the germans to be quite sensitive to the cold compared to the english.

If you have ladies in the house, they like the heating on all the time and too high.
I have a no-female policy as my home is cold and draughty and it's the one thing that's caused more friction than anything else in all my years of renting.
Make sure people don't have convection heathers tucked away to warm their rooms just before bed / getting up.

Get your fellow housemates to hook up and get into couples, then work out a system where people pay a certain amount for use of a room and a certain amount per room. All the cooking for said couples will heat the place and the cost is spread.

To be fair it wont be this cold for more than another month and the problem should go away, it's unnaturally chilly at the moment. (assuming you are using electric heaters) otherwise electric is quite reasonable

it's tricky with shared houses, especially as there are so many of you in there. on a per-house basis, the consumption is probably high, but on a per-person basis, it's probably not bad at all.

it'll get light again soon, and warmer too 🙂

4x computer
4x TV
4x Stereo
4x cooking

Not hard to see how it adds up really