Your cost to submeter the MHP for water?

I am considering purchasing a 20 unit park. Currently there is a master water meter for the park.

How much did it cost you to submeter in your park, per unit?

Did that include installation cost by a plumber?

How long ago did you submeter?

Was it worth it?

Thank you in advance

We budget $150 per pad, and use badger disk meters with the remote reader on the front of the home. OF that, about $55 is the install amount. I have always found value in sub metering, if people pay as they go- they tend to conserve. So the overall cost will go down.

I bid the install out at a flat rate, $50 per home site.

Jim - Where are you buying your meters? I am finding prices in USA blue book of $125 for the Elster Remote Read. Also, when you say remote read, can you clarify your process? There are different levels of automation and I am trying to decide which way to go (eg touch screen, electronic read with handheld device, full blown AMR with daily self reads and 3rd party billing etc)

thanks

Bret

Bret-

We have used 2 places of late- one was ebay. There is a guy selling refurb meters on ebay and we bought a bunch.

the other is http://midamericameter.com/products .

I use badger meters, with the wire that runs to the counter on the front of the home. We do not use the wand. The managers must go to each home and jot down the number. We are paying about $80.00 for the last batch with the remotes delivered in 6 packs.

Thanks Jim,

After much research into various submeter options I found that the fully automated radio read systems can run between $300 to $400 per pad for initial set up. Yes they can give you a daily output of all meters but not sure that is necessary. I settled on Neptune T-10 with remote visual read from Gunners Meters in Pontiac MI, $65 each (based on an order of 95 meters) plus shipping. They also have the freeze jackets for $7 each. If you are on Rent Manager you can buy the hand held device from RM where you punch the meter reads into the hand held unit , then go back to the Utility Module on RM and plug it in via USB and it will load the readings into RM automatically. The cost of the hand held unit is $3000 so initially I’m not going to buy that unit and we are just going to manually enter the numbers into RM. I was trying to avoid manual entry but the cost difference is too much. We have had problems with errors when writing the numbers down in snow and rain, so I’m going to try having the manager just take a picture of the each meter register so no paper and pen required out in the park. Then he can just scroll through the pictures back in the office and enter into RM. Maybe someone can write a smart phone app to handle this interface.

Bret