Save Water and Money as an Apartment Owner With These Simple Tips
No doubt, you don’t want water costs to consume your pocket, so what are you doing about it? if not dealt with properly, water costs can skyrocket and may even cost you a fortune. Apart from using too much water, there are many other factors that makes the cost of water increase drastically, such as failure to inspect plumbing fixtures for leakages and report the leakages.
No property owner wants unnecessary bills, and tenants would surely be pissed off when asked to pay outrageous bills for water. For this reason, you need to follow certain guidelines to help you cut down the cost. If you decide to charge your tenants outrageous water fees for higher water usage, you aren’t solving the problem, you are making it worse.
To solve this issue, you need to find a way of controlling water waste. Although there are many ways to combat water waste, it could be difficult to know which one to adopt if the problem is caused by many factors. Below are helpful strategies to prevent water wastage:
- Carryout routine preventive maintenance
Plumbing fixtures in bathrooms, kitchens and other places do not last forever. With time, they tend to fade, especially toilet flappers. For this reason, property managers should ensure regular inspection of every unit is added to the lease. Always remember that prevention is better than cure.
- Use reliable modern equipment
Toilets that were designed some decades ago mostly use 3.5 gallons of water for each flush, but with newer toilets, flush volume has reduced to about 1.6 gallons. With such dramatic change, water costs have been reduced. This is why it is advisable to use modern toilet fittings, and to save more, you are encouraged to have a water savings expert examine water usage in the whole building.
- Assign a sub-meter for each unit
Sub-meters are beneficial in monitoring the usage of water, even if you don’t bill tenants for water. With this, you will get to know how water is used by each unit and also when they use water. You can use also use them to detect new water leakages and even illegal devices. Hot water usage affects energy cost, so sub-meters will allow you know the hot water usage for every unit. This sounds like a very nice idea, but it is not suitable for older buildings and should mostly be used on new building, since it consists of going under floors and even behind walls, which could be costly.
- Fix every leakage
Inspecting the entire building for water leakages and drips is very necessary, and if any is detected, waste no time in fixing up the problem. You should also let tenants know how necessary it is to report any water issues and act swiftly if they bring one.
Conclusion
If you don’t look for ways to control water usage and limit the waste of water in your property, you may end up spending a fortune on water bills and other avoidable expenses.
