LeakBird

I’ve written about how to calculate your San Francisco water bill, but I thought it might be useful to know how the SFPUC functions and just how many landlords and property managers are getting excessively high water bills due to the likes of tenants’ running toilet conditions everyday.

Back in June of 2008, I spoke with a few of the good folks from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC).  That was just days before the new water rates went into effect on July 1:

• T1 $3.42 per unit (HCF or hundred cubic feet = 748 gallons) for the 1st 3 discharge units per dwelling unit per month (confusing, I know),
• T2 $8.55 per unit for the next 2 discharge units per dwelling unit per month, followed by
• T3 $9.77 per unit for all additional discharge units per dwelling unit per month

As a little background, it’s useful to know that the average San Francisco household uses 7 units per billing cycle, which is equivalent to 5236 gallons.  These households make up 88% of all SFPUC ratepayers.

First, I spoke with Molly Kung at the Conservation Department.  She recommended that I call the Conservation Administrator, Dana Haasz, to get detailed information regarding numbers for running toilets and addressing the questions below, which I wrote down before the calls:

• What percentage of leaks are due to running toilets?
• How much does the average toilet leak?
• How big is the problem of toilets that run for only a couple hours or half a day?
• What percentage of toilets are running right now?
• How much does it cost to refund someone?
• What are the wastewater service tiered rates?
• What is flow factor of 95%?
• How do I decipher the “wastewater colletion and treatment” service fees?

The Conservation Department is in charge of setting up building walk-throughs, to check water meters and do diagnostics.

Molly said the SFPUC has only two field inspectors, and that she would give their contact information to me.  Their names are Sue Tensfeldt and Sanford Lee.

Molly had me call the High Consumption Unit, whose direct line is 415.551.4780.

I then spoke with Joseph Chen, who is the Manager of Units.  There are 3 full-time employees, he said, and they are always busy.

He said, “The tenants need to be reminded to conserve water”, and their water bills need to be constantly monitored.

He said 90% of the high consumption bills are due to running toilets.  He said they have 20 to 30 reports on average every business day, some days they even have 40 or 50 but not too often.

He said that in my business partner Jordan Sudy’s case, where two running toilets caused a $1,000.00 increase in the normal water bill, that was fairly average, but that with big accounts and lots of rental units, sometimes it can be a $5,000 problem.

However, this was uncommon, he assured me.

He also said that sometimes it can be as low as a $100 or $200 problem.  So there is a range.

He said that they do inspections Mon through Sat, but that the office is only open for phone calls during business hours on business days.

I asked him what “flow factor” is.  He said that in San Francisco it’s 95% for multiple unit buildings, meaning that that is the percentage of water that is treated through the wastewater line, while 5% may go to car washes or irrigation, so that 5% doesn’t get charged on your water bill (you can see this is so if you look at the bill pdf on our first LeakBird blog post).

I asked him how many people are getting refunded?  He said that in May, they “reduced 48 accounts out of 93 appeals”.  He seemed to think that this is fairly average.

He agreed with me that most people (if 20 or 30 are calling every day) don’t actually make an appeal, and that about 50% of appeals get approved.  Once approved of course, they get a 50% refund on excess of water used.  And they only get to get one refund in a certain time period (I’m not sure what this time period is, but I think it’s somewhere around 6 months).

I think that usually property managers and landlords fix the problem, that is, the running toilet condition(s) immediately, then don’t go through the rigamarole of getting a 50% refund, because time is precious and it’s a bunch of admin time to file for a refund, and then there’s a likelihood you won’t even receive approval.

Later on, I spoke with Dana Haasz, the Conservation Administrator for the SFPUC.

I didn’t get answers to all of my questions from Dana, as she confirmed that these were the exact problems they were currently working on trying to answer.

“Toilets run,” she said.  “That’s a fact.  And our job is to address that problem.”

“Well, would you say that 10% of all toilets are running, Dana?” I asked.

“I’d say it’s a lot higher than that,” she said.

If you are interested in How You Can Increase Your Cash Flows by $2,500.00 Every Year and Never Pay for High Water Bills Due to Your Tenants’ Running Toilets, sign up for our Free Report here.

Abendigo Reebs is the VP of Business Development for LeakBird Industries LLC in San Francisco, CA. He may be reached by email at ben@leakbird

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