Water sub-metering is a way to measure water, gas, and electrical use. This is typically used in apartments, town homes, and even manufactured homes . Choosing water sub-meters has been acclaimed as the best choice for utility metering because its potential for expanding the sustainability and efficiency of park operations by lessening waste and cost. This can also help positively change utility usage behavior.
If water sub-metering is the best option, why isn’t everybody doing it? Water sub-meters involves technology. This new resource-saving technique gains data through the metering. In short-term, the initial investment of adopting a new technology seems like a lot of money. Some owners and managers will be hesitant as they aren’t getting the immediate return they are seeking for. However, in the long-term, money savings will accrue in numerous ways as well as displace the installation costs.
How Water Sub-metering Saves Money
Sub-metering measures the utility usage of each household. When the individual families get billed, they eventually learn to change their usage behavior. According to the General Services Administration (GSA), upon installation, there is around 0-2 percent drop in energy costs. Raising awareness among occupants and having ongoing identification of options and maintenance improvements can essentially result in savings of 15-45 percent.
Early adopters of water sub-meters have seen highly cost-effective impact and major savings in costs. Despite the investment, the sub-metering eventually pays for itself and adds value to your business and your community…
If you are utilizing water sub-meters, how has it been for you?
And if your not, whats are the factors that are stopping you from implementing sub-meters?
I am definitely for submetering. Like you mentioned it can result in substantial savings in water/sewer usage. It’s the fairest way to handle utility usage because tenants only pay for what they use. It is also great for locating leaks.
We have just recently completed submetering a mobile home park in Ohio with company called Metron. Submetering immediately provided in two great benefits - leak detection and tenant awareness. First, we found several units that have serious water leaks (leaky toilet). One person was using more than 1000 gallons a day! Without submetering, this would have been hard to find. Secondly, the tenants are now aware of how much they use. People stopped wasting. As a result, the usage was cut in half.
While submetering has a lot of benefits, it does come with some cost. First, there is cost for buying and installing meters. Meters cost between 80-120 a piece. Metron had financing program where they cover the full cost of meter/installation, which is great. We had some issues with installation because, each home had a different water pipe fittings, so we had issues installing in some units. We discovered some pipe issues as well.
Second, there is maintenance. In another park with meters, we used to have handful of meters that would freeze even though they were insulated and had heat tapes. Meters were discontinued later and getting replacement meter/freeze plate became an issue later. You should expect some meter to fail over time and to maintain them, but it’s not a huge deal.
Metron is a great company we are one of their distributors.
Luckily with the smart meters if they do freeze its only an 11 dollar fix as opposed to swapping out the whole meter.
I know this is an old thread, but concerning these meters… will Metron actually invoice the tenants and collect the payments?
Or is that hoping for too much !!!
We install the meters handle the reads, provide daily reports, invoice, collect and cut you a check at the end of each cycle minus our fees. providing a complete turn key experience for you. All you literally do is wait for a check each month.
For what it’s worth, I tried multiple times to use ABT, as I’m in WI. ABT never responded with a quote or the information I requested, after multiple promises. Even the sales manager promised personal follow up, but still nothing.
Ended up going with another company that was highly responsive and motivated to get the business. Ill never know how the pricing compared, but at least they were able to get it done.
I so wanted to keep the business in WI, but ABT must have plenty of existing customers to keep them happy.
I’m so sorry to hear about this!
We would have loved your business!
We have been servicing the entire state of WI over 25+ years now and we take pride in the reputation and growth we see every year!
We love new clients and welcome new business with open arms.
On a more positive note I’m glad to see you got your community sub metered and I can guarantee you wont regret it
Feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email if you have any needs or questions in the future we would love to be of any assistance.
I do not recommend Metron. We used them for two of our parks and the experience has been pretty terrible. I’d give them a 2 out of 10. Their install was horrendous: installing meters backwards, installing meters on the wrong water line, etc. We have had many meters malfunction. The data transmission has been a little spotty. And even when the data is good their software (Waterscope) has a lot of glitches. We will never use Metron again.
We to went with Metron. Installation errors were the bigger problem. One backwards, several not wrapped with heat cable, just passed by it. The major weakness of the meter itself is the plastic register retainer ring on top. If over tightened it can tilt the reader, break the plastic ring and not send a reading. Poor design, a flaw. The results of the metering process itself are fantastic though. Stuck toilet flappers and other ‘small’ leaks are now paid by the tenant, who is now suddenly concerned. Water is no longer ‘free’!
@Luke_Hales We have had a very similar experience with Metron. We had a gateway go down within the first month, had to pay to have that installed, while customer service really had no insights beyond reading us the bootup instructions over the phone.
Also had 1 meter installed on the wrong water line, reading 0 gallons/month, and 2 meters which never gave us a reading at all. Finally able to get replacement meters and they are now trying to bill us monthly for the dead meters which never worked …
I haven’t been on this in a while so excuse my absence.
It’s sad to see what people are going through with Metron nowadays. They incorporated a small group to handle meter installs and those guys are awesome, however they don’t do all their own installs. They subcontract the plumbers from my understanding.
We have been installing for almost 30 years with our own in house crew because you just can’t trust a sub contractor to do the job right. There are things you learn along the way, and experiences u have over the years that allow you build a solid method on protecting these meters and making sure they are installed correctly and working efficiently and effectively.
I don’t know much about the newer cellular system but Metrons fixed based radio system has been around for YEARS and is amazing and we have had very little problems.
Metron (manufacturer) is one of the few companies that provide the 20 year warranty so we like that. Anyone that will stand behind a product that long has my vote, especially on these mechanical devices.
We do Audits, inspections, installs , billing , reads data and much more if anyone has any questions or needs anything shoot me a PM and or email me.
@bnr0327 We are in process of trying out submeter solutions. Costs less than Metron and appears other operators have had better experience with them…we’ll see how it goes.
Our first install with Metron went a little shaky. At that point they were using their own installers.
Since then (about 2 year ago) we have done 3 more parks and have had great success with the installers. From what I understand now, the installers are sub contractors for Metron.
Overall happy with Metron. Will sub meter any other park in our future with them.
@onlinefun Submeter Solutions have been working great. We have deployed at 5 different parks with another 4 in the works. The main thing that could be improved is the software interface with the meter readings. Overall, I would give SS an 8.5 out of 10.
