Update: I have a question do you know how many gallons per day each home in your park is using?
What I’ve learned from this experience so far: before you can design a technology for your wastewater treatment plan you need to know how much sewer water is being dumped into your Lagoon each day (GPD).
That means you need to be measuring flow every day.
That brings us to knowing how much water your residents are using per day.
I have a question do you know how many gallons per day each home in your park is using? I don’t know so that is a problem as im just now going about figuring that out.
Otherwise the EPA will assign a value or 75 to 100 gallons per day per resident and that can get very expensive when purchasing the technology because the more the daily flow the more the cost of the technology.
I have one resident using 300 gallons a day more than the other few residents I am monitoring. When buying technology for $500,000 using 15,000 gallons a day that means you’re paying $33 dollars a gallon and this home is going to cost you about $10,000 because of that flapper leak.
Again i would like to know what your average usage of water is per home and if you have you own WWTP how many gallons per day are you processing into the lagoon?
I’ve metered my park for 13 years.
Single people are usually around 500-1,500 gallons a month.
Couples usually around double that.
Family’s often use 4,000 gallons or so per month.
I’ve got one lady that lives on about 400 gallons a month! Then I have a couple that uses over 5,000 a month. Water usage varies a lot, but the numbers I wrote above are about average.
Park has 60 homes private water supply. Monitored every week. Average in winter is 150 to 180 gallons per home per day… In summer months 110 to 150 god. I believe tenants are trickling water in winter to stop freeze ups. Park is in the mountains of NH.Hope this helps
I just visited a friend at an RV Park that uses tanks spread out throughout the park - no drainfields so they pump the tanks by truck when full. So say an RV uses 100 gal / day, 3000 gal / mo… that’s a lot of pumping. They must be pumping the tanks every few days unless they have 100,000 gal tanks, which I doubt. How does this make sense? I’m developing a 40 space RV Park connected to city services. Is there something I’m missing here? Should I install tanks and pump them when full or stick with my plan for city sewer at a base rate of about $55/mo/rv site?
Pumping tanks manually would never make more sense than city sewer. The tank scenario is usually for man camps that need to move. Pipeline workers for example.
I agree. But also it seems my city’s ~$85/mo/unit base fee for water+sewer is a bit outrageous. It’s a small town with an official population of about 2000 so their small scale I guess results in the high fee. But how does this fee seem to you all? I’m hoping to clear about $300/mo/space at my park so I’ll have to charge more like $400+/mo to cover the base utility fees. I guess this is still better than manually pumping tanks, lol!!
Do they implement this restriction for apartments too? Sounds discriminatory and a utilities attorney should have a consult with you and the city attorney.
jhutson, it’s not really a restriction. It’s just their base monthly fee for water and sewer utilities. All cities have a base monthly fee per unit (Equivelent Dwelling Unit), right? This one just seems high to me. The base for water and sewer was more like $50, which seems bad enough. Then they raised it about 1yr ago to $85/mo/unit. And yes, this applies to apartments, hotels, etc. Here is the city’s press release announcing the increase in fee. Fortunately, if I meter water on my units (RV spaces) individually, non-usage for any given month on any given meter currently results in a $0 base fee bill - but the city made it clear this could change at any time resulting in the base monthly fee even for no usage. I wonder how this compares to other cities. Seems wrong to charge for no usage.
Well I am not clear how this applies to RV Parks, since the minimum connection charges for your city are only supposed to apply to dwellings or “residences.” RV’s are personal property and transient in nature.
$80 per month for water and sewer is not really out of line for many cities in Oregon for a single family home. The question is should a rv space be treated similarly to an single family home?However in Oregon cities have very broad latitude to set their own rate structure and are exempt from Public Utility rate regulations. Many cities have aging infrastructure and have massive capital projects to pay for.
We’re considering a construction project and I noticed it puts MH parks at 0.7 ESUs. What’s that in gallons per month in your estimation and is that 30% discount warranted? What’s best practices here if I’m calling for real service needs times 100 or 200 lots?
Would need to look at city specs to see what they consider as an “ESU” in terms of drinking water demand and sewer loading. Unfortunately there is no universal design numbers from city to city. If you PM or email me the details I can look at the city specs and advise. Email is info@merrillwater.com
Generally cities base tap fees and such on sewer loading which is labeled as “service unit” or “equivalent sewer unit” in which they assume each single family home will contribute some many lbs of BOD (biochemical oxygen demand ) to the system. It is nice that this city recognizes that a mobile park does not contribute the same load as a single family home.