TequilaMB
Member
I am an off-site owner of a rental property having three units, two of the units have one resident each, the third has three residents.
The water bill for this property is generally around $150-260 per quarter.
Recently I got a notice that when the meter was read for the July-October quarter, there was "Excessive Water Usage". I arranged for the local manager of the property to meet the City water department at the house to do a "flow test" on the water meter to check for malfunction.
I just got the results of the test. They inform me that the meter is functioning normally, and that from the end of October to the end of November the water use was 9,500 gallons - which is in line with what it usually is. But the usage between July and October was 300,000 GALLONS, resulting in a water bill of over $2,000!
The local manager says none of the tenants reported running toilets, but a contractor that I had doing some repair work at the house said he found outdoor faucet on about three times over the summer, with water just running from the hose into the yard.
I found one source that suggested a running hose could go through 10 gallons per minute. If this is correct, the hose would have had to be running non-stop for 21 days in order to use that amount of water.
The water department says "nothing can be done" about the outrageous water bill, since the meter is currently operating properly. I'm beside myself, everyone is blaming everyone else - the property manager is trying to blame the contractor, the contractor is blaming the tenants, the tenants are all pointing at each other, but nobody has suggested anything that could reasonably account for this spike in usage.
Any thoughts, suggestions, advice would be appreciated.
The water bill for this property is generally around $150-260 per quarter.
Recently I got a notice that when the meter was read for the July-October quarter, there was "Excessive Water Usage". I arranged for the local manager of the property to meet the City water department at the house to do a "flow test" on the water meter to check for malfunction.
I just got the results of the test. They inform me that the meter is functioning normally, and that from the end of October to the end of November the water use was 9,500 gallons - which is in line with what it usually is. But the usage between July and October was 300,000 GALLONS, resulting in a water bill of over $2,000!
The local manager says none of the tenants reported running toilets, but a contractor that I had doing some repair work at the house said he found outdoor faucet on about three times over the summer, with water just running from the hose into the yard.
I found one source that suggested a running hose could go through 10 gallons per minute. If this is correct, the hose would have had to be running non-stop for 21 days in order to use that amount of water.
The water department says "nothing can be done" about the outrageous water bill, since the meter is currently operating properly. I'm beside myself, everyone is blaming everyone else - the property manager is trying to blame the contractor, the contractor is blaming the tenants, the tenants are all pointing at each other, but nobody has suggested anything that could reasonably account for this spike in usage.
Any thoughts, suggestions, advice would be appreciated.