What do you do if the park is on city water; master metered; and they refuse to individually meter the mobile homes because they say it is too much work and expense?
Who is they? The City? I think most cities want to control all the underground pipes to their meters and so many times they want to replace everything right up to the home at the owners expense. This doesn’t stop the park owners, in most cases. from having meters installed, at the park owners expense and management, and billing back to residents based on actual usage.
Yes the city actually said they didn’t want to do it. Now that’s according to the owner who also said he told the city he would even run the pipes himself(weird)
The city doesn’t usually retroactively install meters in your park. They don’t want to own the water lines and have to repair them. That’s the difference between Master Metered and Direct Billed. With Master Metered parks, you install your own sub meters. We use a company called SLC. I like them and their online reading service is the cheapest we’ve found.
I’m not invested with this company, I just think they do a good job:
Ryan Eichbrecht
Vice President
SLC Meter LLC
Hydro Meter Service INC.
595 Bradford St.
Pontiac, MI 48341
Office: 248-625-0667 Ext 317
Cell: 248-403-9862
ryan@slcmeter.com
Best of luck! Will
Great thanks
That info was given to me by the owner in general conversation
So I haven’t called the city myself, but I will look into it thanks
That is a typical situation. Most of our parks are master metered by the city, but we are responsible to meter the individual homes. If you, as park owner, meter the homes, it is very inexpensive compared to the additional revenue and cost savings that you will generate. We just installed 75 meters that are read through WiFi on an hourly basis and the cost was under $100 per meter. In the first 3 weeks our average daily usage dropped by 41%, which, based on water and sewer costs, means we will pay for the meters within 2 months. Our revenues are now greater because we bill tenants for usage and our expenses are lower because the tenants conserve more.
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mPark Hi was wondering who you bought your meters through and did they install them?
We bought through Metron Sustainable Servives and our park manager installed them. We chose to do it internally because we wanted to check and replace heat cable and pipe insulation and at the time there was an installation backlog.
@mPark So your guys installed them under the mobile home above ground then? What part of the US did you do this? How cold does it get there? Thanks
I had a master metered park as well. There were leaks everywhere and tenants weren’t paying their water bills (ratio billing through Multifamily Utility Co.)
I approached the city and was told they would direct bill tenants if I agreed to the following:
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Entire water system had to be replaced in the park to bring it up to code.
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POH accounts had to be in my name (they only deal with the actual owner of the home)
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If a tenant skips out and doesn’t pay their bill, the account balance had to be paid off before they’d set that lot up for a new tenant account.
The project was expensive and took a few months but I am beyond happy I did it. The city might not want to initially direct bill tenants, but if you agree to some terms that take the risk out of it for them, they might be open to it and you’d benefit as well. Plus since you have to pay for their portion of the work (meter installations, water main tap, etc) it doesn’t cost them anything anyways.
Now if a lot renter doesn’t pay the bill they get their water shut off and I no longer have semi-annual $5000 sewer bills to look forward to since they have to pay for that too based on water usage.
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We did the install in northern Indiana. Last January temperatures were 0 degrees for 1 week. We were sure to inspect heat cable and insulation in the process, and we repaired as necessary.
Individual Meters
Depending on the numbers of homes, third party billing companies providing meter reading, billing and collection (R/B/C) like Southern Water Management charge approximately $3 to $5 per home for completer turnkey sub-metering services utilizing radio frequency technology. For owners that want to do their own collections, basic on-line monitoring services usually are $1 to $2 per home for access via the cloud. Basic manual read meters can be provided for @ $65 while RF meters are @$150, a qualified maintenance person or local plumber can usually install the meter in less than one hour.
As always refer to your state/county/city regarding water/sewer services, prior to billing residents for their individual water/sewer service.
We’re here to answer your water sub-metering questions.
Sincerely
Dan Helton
President
Southern Water Management
727-827-4509
Dan@SouthernWaterManagement.com
http://SouthernWaterManagement.com
Be very careful of ABT Water. We found them on this forum and they sell and install meters but did not uphold their end of the agreement with us and now we are dealing with a mess.