Third summer in a row and we’re back on the same Con Ed fight. Three of us in a prewar walk-up. We’ve always done a flat three-way split for electric. Now one roommate is WFH all day and runs the window unit in the common area from basically 9 to 6, plus her own unit at night. The other roommate is at an office or his girlfriend’s place four-plus nights a week, so he wants a break. I’m in the middle because I work a hybrid schedule.

Are flat splits ever worth keeping in a small NYC apartment, or do we go usage-based? What do y’all actually do without making the lease feel hostile?

Flat split dies the second someone goes fully remote and someone else is never home. I’ve seen it get ugly.

My old four-bed tried a base/usage split: everybody paid an equal base amount for the fridge/router/normal stuff, then we split the summer cooling overage by who was actually home during peak hours. It wasn’t perfect but it beat the alternative.

Do you have separate meters? Probably not, so don’t get too precise or you’ll spend more time auditing than the money is worth.

Oh man, this is my favorite niche NYC roommate dispute! Have you tried pulling the hourly usage from your Con Ed account? You can literally see the weekday afternoon spikes where the common AC is peaking. That’s not a mystery fee, that’s a usage pattern!

Window units are also wildly different. A 6,000 BTU in a small room is not the same as a 12k aimed at the living room/kitchen. If you’re going to split by anything, split by BTU-hours, not by people. People say ‘I barely run it’ but the data says otherwise.

I’m not trying to turn the kitchen into a spreadsheet, but the BTU-hours thing might calm the common-area war. Our WFH roommate claims the common AC only runs ‘a few hours’ but that room catches brutal afternoon sun and has no ceiling fan. She thinks the other roommate is just cheap. I need something simple enough to explain over bodega coffees.

Nah, if they’re already calling each other cheap, you’re past the easy fix. Best thing we did was put a plug-in power meter on the big common window unit for two weeks. We didn’t keep it forever, just long enough to stop the ‘I never use it’ argument. If it shows heavy use, the WFH roommate picks up an extra share. If it shows less than everyone assumed, the flat split survives.

Yes! Plug-in meter is the move! But also check if the common unit is even the right size for the room. An oversized unit short-cycles and still drinks electricity, so the humidity stays gross and the bill stays high. Have you cleaned the filter? A clogged filter makes it run longer.

Also: the window gap is probably leaking cold air. Weatherstrip the window kit first, then see if the bill drops before you fight about the split!

Update: I checked the Con Ed graph and it’s not subtle. The heavy days line up with the WFH roommate’s at-home days. But to be fair, the other roommate runs a gaming PC in his room so he’s not exactly a monk. This is why I hate flat splits. I don’t want to become the bill cop.

Might propose we keep the flat split but adjust seasonally: everyone pays base, and if a month goes over a trigger number, the person home most that month covers the overage. Is that too vague?

That’s not vague if you set the trigger number before the next bill. Vague is ‘we’ll see what feels fair.’ And yeah, the gaming PC matters. In summer it’s basically a space heater. My old roommate had one and his room stayed ten degrees warmer.

Maybe put gaming PC in the same conversation as WFH AC, not as a gotcha but because the bill is now two different summer loads.

Careful with the seasonal adjustment! If you’re not on balanced billing, a single hot week can blow up the whole month. Have you tried a plug-in timer for the common AC? That way the common unit doesn’t run from 1 to 4 when nobody’s in the room, and the WFH roommate can run her own smaller unit instead.

I’d also put the WFH setup in the smallest bedroom, not the living room, because the common area is the least efficient to cool! This is solvable, but only if people stop treating the bill as a moral test.

Fair. The trigger number is probably the move. I also told WFH roommate to leave the common AC at 76 instead of 70 and buy a standing fan for the kitchen. We’ll reconvene after the next bill.

At least now we’re talking about it before the passive-aggressive notes on the fridge.

Wait! One more thing. If anyone is paying separately and not on autopay, check for a late fee or paper bill charge buried in there. Some Con Ed plans have extra charges if you’re not paperless, and deposits can sit on the account forever. That saved us enough to cover a bodega sandwich dinner.

I still think the BTU-hour split is elegant. Keep us posted after the next bill!