LeakBird

The Boston Globe recently ran an op-ed about water conservation in rental properties entitled, “Do Environmentalists Rent Property?“, which also has some fantastic comments from landlords and tenants in the greater Boston area.  The author wonders if she’s the only one who is a good tenant when it comes to not using more water than she needs when her landlord foots the water bill.  She harps a bit on the notion that tenants can be somewhat negligent if they aren’t paying for that extra 10 minutes in the shower.

“Is there any truth to the impression that tenants are wasteful?” she asks.

Well, I’m here to tell her yes there is.

The National Multiple Family Submetering and Allocation Billing Program came out with a three-year study in 2007 demonstrating that when tenants pay for their water, consumption drops at least 15%.

My business partner Jordan Sudy is a property manager in San Francisco.  We have invented and patented the LeakBird device, which is the first acoustic leak detector for running toilets, because of a high water bill he received almost two years ago which roughly tripled the normal water bill from $500.00 to $1,500.00.  When Jordan looked into the problem, he found that two tenants had let their toilets run practically continuously for two weeks.

“Gee, the toilet still worked,” they said.  “We didn’t think it was all that big of a deal.”

Now this doesn’t mean that tenants are all negligent or don’t care. There are many proactive environmentalists and conservationists and we are all blessed to have them as tenants if we’re in the property management business.  It simply means that when you don’t pay for something you don’t have a sense of its value.

One of my business mentors recently lamented the $1,300.00 phone bill his son received because his eleven year old daughter had been sending hundreds of text messages to her friends, without her parents’ knowledge.  His son, of course, had to pay the bill, then put into place a system to make sure that it didn’t happen again.

In the same way, landlords and property managers have to put in place systems to accomplish the task of securing their water supplies, particularly at the single largest point of residential in-building water consumption, namely, the toilet.

Did you know that 90% of all high water bills are due to running toilets? Did you know that 10% of all residential in-building water consumption can be attributed to leaking or running toilet fixtures?

A lot of experts and experienced professionals out there have water conservation tips for rental property owners as well as water conservation programs for landlords and apartment managers.  These are excellent places to start, but in the end property managers and landlords need water auditing security systems that guarantee or insure that they won’t receive that $2,000.00 water bill in the mail.

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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