I have owned a park in southern california for more than a decade. In the first 2 years, our water expenses pretty much matched our income but the variance has been increasing for the last few year to a couple of thousands a year. We operate a pool and laundry room and all residents are sub metered. We have hired contractors to check for leaks at the pool and changed the meters to new ones but the variance still is not decreasing. Has anyone here encountered such a problem before? Any cost effective suggestions on how I can resolve this issue?
You may need to have the whole system checked for leaks.
I am also in SoCal (San Diego). We use CPL for all our leak detection in San Diego County.
DIY equipment:
We are having the same issue. Leak detection company didn’t help much. We are master metered and submetered (Metron) at each home. No visible signs of soggy/wet areas in the MHP. Any other options besides replumbing park?
How big is the difference? I have a laundry and pool that we checked and there are no leaks so will hire a leak detection company to see where the leak is coming from.
3,000 gallons a day, it has been steadily increasing every year.
No expert here but 3k gallons a day is not much. Equivalent to a couple running toilets and the depending on the size of your park, it’s age and the type of soil you may never see it as a noticeable soft or soggy patch. You could have multiple small connection leaks throughout the park.
Again… Not an expert a few life lessons but what is your master meter reading at 230 am vs your house meters? If your master is showing small usage in the absolute middle of the night you can assume you have a main leak. We shut down sections of the park to help isolate. Also as crazy as this sounds we had a couple homes exterior faucets plumbed in ahead of our metron house meters. Buried and never knew.
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So my manager has gotten a leak detection company to check for leaks and the company confirmed there are no leaks in the system.
All the units are sub metered and I am at a loss about where the variance is coming from. The only weird thing is that total water income has not increased over the last few years even though rates have increased. We employ a meter reading company to read and bill the tenants and we have also changed the older meters to ensure its not a meter problem.
Any suggestions on the next course of action? Its a 54 unit park in Southern California, we have a pool and laundry room. We billed tenants 13k for water bill but our water expense is 23k for 2024.
Did you verify that the meters are being billed correctly?
Take a photo of each meter to verify that you are using the correct units to bill back usage. Also verify that each meter is being read correctly. Some meters use 3 digits while others use 4 digits. This can cause a 10X error. IE space 3 reads with 4 digits, but space 8 reads with 4 digits. Space 3 is only being billed 1/10 of the water they are using.
We have had this problem in the past. One time, we were billing in CF, but the meters were reading in Hundred Gallons. So the Tenant would use 100 Gallons of water but only get billed for 1 CF (7.48 Gallons).
We just recently discoved a $30K mistake where we were reading the meter and billing incorrectly. We were billing in Gallons but the meters were billing in 10 Gallon increments. Each person’s bill was 1/10 of what is should have been.
I suggest you verify each meter is being read correctly and the billing company is billing correctly.
Since you are in CA you are required to test 10% of your meters annually, have you been doing that? You’d be surprised how just one little piece of sand can totally throw off a meter. That little piece of sand can circulate around inside the meter and get jammed intermittenly in the gears. Making it nearly impossible to figure out the problem.
The top meter, the last zero is fixed. If the beginning read is 000 and the ending read is 225, then the customer has used 2,250 gallons.
This meter is in 100 gallons, if the beginning read is 000 and the ending read is 225 the customer has used 22,500 gallons.
