LeakBird

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 [...]

(March 16, 2009, The Water Blog, Portland Water Bureau)

March 16-20th is the EPA’s first, annual Fix A Leak Week.  Fix A Leak Week is sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s WaterSense program, which seeks to protect the nation’s water supply by promoting efficient products and services and educating the public about water conservation.
According to WaterSense:

11,000 [...]

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 [...]

The average household US water bill varies widely from state to state and municipality to municipality.  Small town household water rates fall somewhere between $1.00 and $2.00 per 748 gallons of water or HCF (hundred cubic feet).  Large city household water rates are from $2.00 to $3.00 per 748 gallons of water.  (Nationally, water rates [...]

Okay, so this number may shock you, but trust me, I didn’t make it up.  I actually did a year’s worth of research, and I haven’t heard anyone say this yet — in fact, I’d like someone to disprove it.
Here’s what I extrapolated.  I’ll preface by stating that 25% to 40% of all in-building, residential [...]

(March 2, 2009, The Richmond Daily News)
Richmond’s water and sewer line systems are old, worn down and some think expensive.
Richmond Third Ward Candidate Terrie Lee Stanley addressed the Richmond City Council on Wednesday night to make a plea on behalf of residents.
Stanley said she had been contacted by 13 residents just in one day about [...]

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 [...]

(Photo Courtesy of Treehugger.com via AP/David Zalubowski)
Tenants who fail to report leaking or running toilets to Landlords or property managers cause water billing nightmares.  Usually, the best a Landlord can do is figure out in which unit the leaking toilet condition occurred, schedule a plumber to fix the problem, foot the exorbitant water bill, then [...]

(Nov. 1, 2008, Miami Herald)
Calderon noted that most high bills are caused by a leaking toilet, guests staying in the home or tampering.

Last year property management and real estate behemoth CitiApartments purchased my 17-unit-or-so Victorian apartment building, which is kitty-corner to the upper east end of Dolores Park in the Mission in San Francisco. Lately my toilet, which must be from the 80’s (built some 30 years ago, in a time when natural resources seemed infinite), [...]

I’m a property manager for a mom-and-pop company that owns several residential buildings in San Francisco. In April of 2007 one of our buildings, a twenty-one unit, early 20th century Victorian in the Lower Haight, saw its water usage more than double over a two-month span, going from approximately 70,000 gallons to 168,000 gallons of [...]