LeakBird

(May 16, 2009, The Chicago Daily Herald)

Q. I have been renting a duplex unit for more than three years. A week ago, my landlord told me the water bills have been getting very high and that she was thinking about charging me for water. My lease states that I am not responsible for water unless [...]

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Milton Friedman

It can be said that we don’t value what we don’t pay for. To tenants who don’t foot their units’ water bills, a running toilet may only mean a minor audible nuisance.  To a landlord or property manager, a running toilet means a higher water bill and [...]

The manager relies on systems, the leader relies on people.
Unknown
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Murphy’s Law

When it comes to running toilets, you can’t rely on your tenants to report them, unless you have a system in place. In other words, people depend on systems. Chapters 5 and 6 will explore systems in further [...]

(April 20, 2009, The Plain Dealer)
Landlord James Kelly isn’t convinced. He has wrestled with the division for four months over a $1,300 combined water and sewer bill — five times larger than normal for a house he owns in Cleveland. The house is empty, and at one point the water was turned off for repairs. [...]

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
George Berkeley
Before we move on, let’s rephrase Berkeley’s famous question:
If a toilet runs in the bathroom and no is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
The latter part of this chapter will address [...]

Toilets run.
Dana Haasz
Conservation Administrator, SFPUC
If you are a property manager, a landlord, or a water manager, or if you would like to be, this e-book is written for you.
We at LeakBird have done hundreds of hours of research over the past two years and would like to share with you what we have learned.
This e-book [...]

Perhaps you’re new to the field of
property management or landlording, or
weathered by years of experience. Two
things, however, you hold dear no
matter what level you operate from.
Your two most precious resources
are MONEY & WATER.
If you have cash flows that are secure,
you don’t have to evict your tenant
due to foreclosure.  If you have a
secure water supply, you [...]

Property managers, landlords and water companies or utilities consider two resources their most precious:

Money
Water

Without secure cash flows and water supplies, their businesses will be under water almost instantaneously.
Because 95% of landlords and property managers pay their tenants’ water bills, it’s natural that they’re interested in where they can most effectively manage and secure the [...]

If a toilet runs in the bathroom, will anybody hear? You can bet your bottom dollar they’ll hear, but only when the property manager or landlord receives the high water bill, that is, AFTER THE FACT. And believe us, it’s loud and clear!
I remember my talk with Dana Haasz, Conservation Administrator for the San Francisco [...]

Many landlords and property managers, such as Jeff Porter at USA Landlord, establish excellent “water conservation programs” for their tenants, involving a number of elements:

Tenant Education
Tenant Motivation
Installation of Water Conservation Devices

While it’s essential to have a conservation program for your buildings, being proactive with tenants who don’t foot their own water bills can take a [...]

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 [...]

(Feb. 19, 2009, Aguanomics)
CL sent in this:
I recently got a letter from my apartment complex telling me they are switching from hot water sub-metering to a ratio-utility billing system [RUBS], and they will bill based on square footage of the apartment. From what I can tell, sub metering is superior because it gives people a [...]

If you’re a landlord or property manager, there are certain things you shouldn’t be doing when it comes to water conservation in your buildings.  We’ve compiled the top seven “Worst Practices” here:

 
Not Monitoring Your Tenants’ Running Toilets: The toilet is the single biggest culprit when it comes to in-building water waste.  There are lots of [...]

In my four years as a property manager, responsible for several buildings in San Francisco, one question that has come to mind time and time again concerns tenant proactivity with regard to reporting problems with respective units.  It seems that there are three main factors that push tenants to report problems:

The problem will directly effect [...]

Do your tenants’ toilets keep constantly running? Do you receive high water bills maybe once or twice a year? What approaches do you take to combat this problem? What is your system for dealing with it, as a landlord or property manager?
We randomly called 10 property managers in San Francisco to enquire into this issue. [...]