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I live in a house in Michigan that was turned into 6 apartments. My apartment is the main door on the main floor. t has recently come to my attention that the hallways and part of the house that is NOT apart of my apartment are wired with my apartment and are a part of my DTE bill.

I cannot keep paying a rising bill every month because he refuses to fix the problem. It's not fair for me to have to pay anything outside of my apartment. It is a month to month lease and I am a felon and he's one of the only people who will rent to me.

What can I do?

FreeMan
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user150989
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1 Answers1

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The first thing to do would be to investigate how much money this costs you.

For example a 5 Watt LED lamp, powered 8 hours a day, will consume 5*8=40 Wh (watt hours) per day, or 1200 watt hours per month, which is 1.2 kilowatt hours per month. You can check how much that costs on your electricity bill, that's probably around 20 cents per lightbulb per month.

In other words, if it's just LED lightbulbs, it's not worth the trouble.

So:

the hallways and part of the house that is NOT apart of my apartment are wired with my apartment and are a part of my DTE bill.

What could cost you actual money would be stuff like heating, electric stove, oven, 24/7 high power lights for "indoors gardening", water heater, bitcoin mining, etc.

If a part of a neighbor's appartment is plugged into your meter, why not just talk to them, then cut off your own power at the panel and check what lights or outlets in their appartment stop working. If it's just lights, who cares. If it's their main heater, then it's worth it to pursue the matter.

bobflux
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