LeakBird

In order to calculate how much your toilet wastes in a city like San Francisco, we need to know the water footprint of your entire building. Of course, if you’re a property manager or landlord, you’ll be especially interested in this, as tenants don’t foot the water bills anyhow.  I’m going to give facts from [...]

If you recently received a high water bill, there’s a better than 90% chance that it was due to a running or leaking toilet.
Of course, in order to know that your water bill is a bit above the norm, you ought to know your typical, average monthly or bi-monthly water bill.  In a recent post, [...]

There’s a fantastic article called 15 Easy Toilet Tune Ups that runs through a few of the sounds your toilet makes when it’s on the fritz, that is, running or leaking or in need of repair.
Basically, even though I know there are more sounds a toilet can make, I’ve put together a list of seven:

The [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

 
One only need flip open their local weekly to come across countless, sometimes useful ways and means to save water, go green, reduce energy — let’s admit, thou shalt conserve is the eleventh commandment.
Often times, the toilet is mentioned once or twice, but usually in passing.  Hence, I thought it might be useful to create [...]

(Feb. 16, 2009, Channel 3000)

Officials Say Customers Use 30M Gallons Of Water Each Day
Officials said that toilets are targeted because they send so much water down the drain, stressing local water sources and local wallets. The new, green-friendly utility program is out to change all that, WISC-TV reported.
Madison Water Utility general manager Tom Heikkinen said [...]

(Nov. 18, 2008, PerthNow)

HOUSEHOLDERS would be charged for each flush under a radical new toilet tax designed to help beat the drought.
The scheme would replace the current system, which sees sewage charges based on a home’s value – not its waste water output.
CSIRO Policy and Economic Research Unit member Jim McColl and Adelaide University Water [...]

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. [...]

(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 [...]

“In my mind, money is always the biggest motivation for everybody. If you stick it to their pockets, they will fix the daily stupid things,” said the water works chief of Jamestown, Rhode Island last year, regarding Jamestown’s successful water conservation program.
And that is just what will [...]

It’s All About The Metering…

At present there is really no way to keep track of those responsible for excessive water use and waste among the millions of renters who live in buildings where water metering is building wide (or ‘master’ metered) rather than metered by unit, as is the case with gas and [...]