Tenant-Landlord Water Conservation Incentives: It’s All About the Water Metering (LeakBird)

May.27, 2008 in Prop Management, Water Conservation

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 electric.

It is for this reason, among others of course, that the public works has been forced to lay nearly the entire burden of water conservation on those citizens whose water use is metered directly, namely, landlords responsible for the master meter, or homeowners responsible for their home’s water meter.

However, as I described my most recent article, as it will no doubt in part help the issue of scarcity amidst drought and an ever bourgeoning populous to charge more for water, and thus, to discourage lawn watering and the filling of swimming pools, this cutting back will, in fact, still do very little in the face of the massive waste generated by a rental community that knows nothing about the amount of waste that their leaking fixtures generate.

In the inaugural article of this blog, I demonstrated that one toilet running at the rate of 2 gallons a minute will waste 50,000 gallons over a three-week period. It must be realized that the sound of this toilet running is slight, and that in most cases of running, the toilet will continue to work although the leak continues unabated.

This condition, whereby water is wasted and charges are unseen directly, but fixture continues to work is what leads to the environment of negligence that is so devastating to the water supply, as well as to those landlords and home owners who pay directly, and are forced to ration off their green lawns and full swimming pools.

It is clear that what is needed is some sort of auditing system that will alert the renter to the severity of the problem, even though that tenant doesn’t see the water bill, doesn’t know the amount of water wasted, and as such, isn’t given the incentive to care.

This auditing system should work in such a way as to give the tenant incentive to stem the flow of a leaking fixture by sounding some sort of alarm where there exists a leak condition.

In this way, there would be, in essence, an individual meter attached to and auditing the usage of an otherwise un-metered and un-checked source of water waste.

For instance, when a toilet has been leaking for more than say, 30 minutes, this auditing system would sound a slightly irritating alarm, and in this way, would take the relatively gentle sound of a running toilet that can be accepted, and turn it into a provocative sound, more in line with the level of the problem. This will force a situation wherein the tenant can no longer tolerate the leaking, and as such, will bring the tenant to make a phone call or undertake to perform some repair in order to stop the noise, and most essentially, the leak itself.

We anticipate a system such as the one we describe would save millions of gallons of water a year, thus alleviating the strain on our overstretched water supply and the uncomfortable rationing that ensues.

The key to keeping pools full and lawns green is not in rationing until the levels rise again, but in working to stem waste in places where it has been as yet unchecked.

It’s all in the metering, and the rentals have none. As Abendigo wrote in the previous post, wireless sub metering is a far too expensive (at $300 a pop) option, and difficult to read and maintain as well when scaled over the millions of units that require metering.

It is for this reason that we need to have developed and deployed, a relatively inexpensive and easy to install system that will bring accountability to the, by no fault of their own, unaccountable masses.

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.

Jordan Sudy is the VP of Product Development for LeakBird Industries LLC in San Francisco, CA. He may be reached by email at jordan@leakbird.com

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