Why You Should Have A Plumber Install Individual Water Meters In Your Rental Apartments | Knoxville, TN
According to Environmental Protection Agency, at least 40 states in the US are anticipating water shortages by 2024. An increase in population and instances of extreme weather causes this shortage. As a result, there has been a continuous upsurge in water utility bills. With these growing water costs, homeowners and rental property owners are looking for ways to reduce water wastage and ensure responsible water use. Submetering, or using individual meters, is one of the solutions that many have turned to. Having a plumber near you install a meter per flat ensures that the inefficiencies of the apartment block metering are avoided.
What’s Individual Water Metering?
Traditionally, the rental property owners installed one meter on their property and paid the water utility bills, or the tenants shared the bill among themselves. However, this places some tenants at a disadvantage. Individual water metering ensures that the rental property owner monitors water volumes used by individual tenants and bills them accordingly. However, the rental property owner has to have a plumber install these individual meters in every eater inlet coming into a flat. The property manager can then check the meter readings and bill the tenant per the readings. You even can use some metering apps to automate the billing process. Below are the different metering technologies for submeters available in the market today.
Prepaid Water Meters: The rental property owner can install prepaid water meters in an area where the water supply lines leave for each flat. When the tenants want to use water, they must pay first to receive the water. If the token or threshold expires, the tenant has to pay again.
Pay as You Go: In these water meters, the tenants and homeowners receive a monthly water bill depending on the volume of water used.
Manual Reading: These are old-type water meters that show readings digitally. However, they cannot transmit their readings wirelessly. The building manager or maintenance person takes periodic rounds, noting the meter readings in a register. They then send the tenants the bill based on that reading.
Single Water Meters
Commonly, older apartment buildings fitted only one water meter for reading the volume of water used in the entire building. It means that the single water bill based on the total volume of water used is equally shared between different flats of an apartment. This can create many problems that you can even think of. Do you still use a single water meter? You should call a plumber to replace it to avoid the following issues:
Issues with Single Apartment Water Meters
With these units, the maintenance person or rental apartment manager records the readings, divides the bill among the number of flats, and sends the bill to the tenants. So, what are the issues with single-apartment water meters?
Billing Issues
One of the main problems with single meters is that tenants all pay an equal share of bills, regardless of the amount of water used. This is an unfair billing scheme, as there is no way that all tenants can use the same volume of water. If you use this billing scheme, you might even have heard your tenants complain. If you are facing this issue, call a plumber and have them install submeters. This is a huge selling point nowadays.
Water Wastage
Additionally, having evenly split bills means you need a way of knowing the volume of water used by each flat. Have a plumber near you install a sub-metered system so you can get itemized individual bills. This ensures you know which tenant uses much water and which is using less. Additionally, your tenants can be better informed and take the required measures to conserve water.
Increased Rates
If you own or invest in an apartment building with only one meter, you cannot legally charge your tenants for the water usage component of your council rate. Hence, you might have to increase the rent for these expenses. Otherwise, your single water meter will cost you money. Have a plumber install submeters at your home to avoid increased rates.
What Are the Benefits of Installing Individual Water Meters?
Responsible Water Use
The most important and obvious benefit of having a plumber install individual water meters is allowing tenants to be conscious of their water use. They can begin implementing different water conservation methods by billing your tenants directly for their water use.
Measurement and Data
Having a plumber near you install water submeters can help tenants analyze and optimize water-related data and numbers. For instance, the tenants can reduce the amount of water needed for gardening by implementing techniques such as mulching if most of the society’s water consumption comes from watering the community gardens. They also can generate water conservation ideas through data analysis. With these data-driven water conservation ideas, the tenants can save on water usage, paying less on water bills and conserving the environment.
Leakage Detection
The other benefit of hiring a plumbing professional to install submeters is that water leaks, losses, and inefficiencies can be detected by comparing your tenants’ water usage with the total water your property receives for that period.
Equitable Water Expenses Distribution
With the increased water costs, it is natural that your tenants might feel discontent if they receive the same water utility bills with all their water conservation with their neighbors that have been misusing water. Having a plumber install submeters helps deal with this issue. It creates a sense of fairness among the members when each tenant is responsible for their water bill. Members will likely cooperate when it comes to paying maintenance fees.
Do you still use the old single apartment meters at your rental apartments or home, and do you need to install submeters? Contact us at My Professional Plumber to book an appointment. Our technician will install individual water meters to ensure you get the benefits above.
Check our most recent blog on this topic here.
Photo By Konoplytska at istock
