The past month’s water bill doubled. I am sure there is a leak somewhere in the park. Since the park is all tenant owned, what are some ways you would recommend in order to find the issue to lower the water bill. There is another possibility. There is one tenant who is constantly behind on rent, I evict once they are late for rent, they could be maliciously letting the water run to rack up my bills. Any ideas how to deal with this? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
You should submeter and watch your bill go down 200%. After implementation and seeing the first month’s use let the tenants with high usage know that if they don’t fix their leaks they’re on the hook for the high charges next month. If there is not any high usages on the submeters you have a leak somewhere in the ground.
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I agree with the metering. We have a P-trap outside every home on the sewer line. One thing we did prior to metering was unscrew the P-Trap top and see if water was running when it shouldn’t. That would help find running commodes and the like from a particular home.
Submetering will identify many problems. We once had a tenant using over $1200 per month on water and sewer and was only paying $300 lot rent. The tenant had a broken spigot, so he let the water run 24 hours per day 365 days per year. We also found another tenant whose usage would spike to over 100 gallon per hour starting at midnight and wane around 6AM. Never identified what he was doing but it could have been watering the lawn, filling a landscape fertilizer truck etc. Either way, submetering will point out these issues and halt the behavior. You will be amazed at the patterns you will identify.
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Until you sub-meter tenants have control of water usage. Your just a spectator begging, asking, hoping tenant will use less, fix leaks etc. They wont cause it doesnt benefit them. Been there.
Sub-metering will provide conscious water conservation, and ongoing proactive water leak monitoring by your residents.
You say bill has doubled. Is that in $$$ or usage?
It is possible rates have gone up.
Hi Everyone, it’s Bill. All good questions, it’s about finding the solution to the problem. If you get a chance, we have the solutions, please take a look at our website where our meters connect via cellular phone to our data analytics software called WaterScope. Helps find everything here plus more such as back flow alerts, water temp etc., or give me a call at 720-826-1174 and I can answer all your questions about water usage.
https://metronsubmetering.com/waterscope-tutorials/
It doubled in one month?! Did a tenant install a new pool? There is a national water leak locating company that I have had good results with that may be able to help.
Also, before you install the sub-metering, it doesn’t hurt to call the City and ask if they will take over ownership of the system. They will likely say no, or require a bunch of improvements, but sometimes you get lucky.