How much water can you waste?

[BobHudson]

I opened up a hydro and water bill for my 4 plex in Hamilton and am quite shocked at the amounts.
It seems that the water bill for the past 2 months has jumped from 1.7 cubic metres a day last year to 8.66 cubic metres. My water and sewer charge for 2 months (Aug/Sep) is almost $1,000!

I have checked with the tenants to see what may be happening. Our property manager is replacing an older toilet in an upstairs unit and the people on the main floor grew tomatoes this year.

Any other ideas as to what may be happening? Could it be a water meter issue? Can leaking toilets put through that much water? Do tomato plants need that much watering? What else can it be? Any thoughts?

 

[dplummer]

I once had a tenant that could always hear water running. Turned out it was the water line comming into the house.Thank God it was BEFORE the water meter. Is it possible you have a water leak after the meter? I don`t know if a continuous running toilet would use that much water. Doug

 

[lanedry77]

Hi Bob,

I just did a quick search online, and came across this;

A "running" toilet can waste two gallons of water per minute. A silent leak in a toilet can waste up to 7,000 gallons of water per month.

Given your jump of 6.96 cubic meters per day, that works out to an extra 208.8 cubic meters per month, or 54,947 US gallons (45,753 imperial gallons) per month.

So, it seems like your water usage would only makes sense if (1) seven or eight toilets all developed silent leaks at the same time [obviously not likely], or (2) one toilet is now `running` about 64% of the time.

so, just based on the numbers, there must be one bad toilet in the building that is often catching on `open` after a flush.

Oh, and no - tomatoes don`t use that much water. Presuming there`s no ten acre greenhouse attached to the building.

I hope that helps,

David.

 

[Aneta]

Try calling the utility company and tell them you have reason to believe the meter might be malfunctioning. If it`s old, that may be the case. They may charge you to do an inspection/test, but it may be worthwile considering the time and effort it may take looking for other causes of the leak.

Perhaps there is more laundry being done for one reason or another? Maybe looking into a plumber and ask them to do a site wide leak inspection.

This may be an opportunity to replace older broken fixtures with water efficient ones. There is so much of that stuff on the market now.

Good luck!

 

[glennpociluyko]

QUOTE (fujibob @ Oct 27 2007, 07:44 AM) I opened up a hydro and water bill for my 4 plex in Hamilton and am quite shocked at the amounts.
It seems that the water bill for the past 2 months has jumped from 1.7 cubic metres a day last year to 8.66 cubic metres. My water and sewer charge for 2 months (Aug/Sep) is almost $1,000!

I have checked with the tenants to see what may be happening. Our property manager is replacing an older toilet in an upstairs unit and the people on the main floor grew tomatoes this year.

Any other ideas as to what may be happening? Could it be a water meter issue? Can leaking toilets put through that much water? Do tomato plants need that much watering? What else can it be? Any thoughts?


Hi Bob - it is possible - I had a similar experience with a property a couple of years ago.

Two separate tenants in a 5-plex had running toilets that we didn`t catch for a couple of weeks (one tenant was leaving & didn`t care, the other "was meaning to mention it" to us). We fixed the toilets, but the water bill came in at a shocking 5 times normal. I contacted the municipal water department and outlined the situation - they asked me to send a letter by fax explaining the situation, including dated bills for plumber or parts and they would consider a "One-time High Bill Adjustment". Although I don`t recall the credit being quite as large (or quite as soon) as I was hoping, I felt it was a reasonably satisfactory resolution. Note however that I still had to pay the original large bill on time, and the municipality did not send a cheque, just issued a credit - which meant it took quite a few months to gradually clear.

I don`t know if every water authority has policies like this, but I think I was treated reasonably fairly there in Kawartha Lakes (i.e. Lindsay).

Three changes we`ve made to reduce the chances of this occuring again:
1) Tenants are reminded whenever possible that they are to let us know immediately if toilet mechanisms ever start sticking/running - we will be more than glad to attend to them promptly.
2) Anytime we`re visiting a property we are much more apt to visit the basement and listen for that magical sound of silence - the sound of water NOT constantly trickling down the waste pipe.
3) We have started keeping a much closer lookout for spikes in water usage in our monthly financial comparison reports. Anything greater than a 10% month-to-month change gets flagged and investigated until there`s a satisfactory explanation.

>glenn