Are We Overpaying for Water?
I’ve just taken over managing our small 7 apt co-op. Having only lived in NY a short time i was shocked to find our water bill for this year is so high. 2009 bill $ 5,675 12.9% increase $ 732 2010 bill $ 6,407 FYI. They also say our daily water usage is 718 gallon/day….
I’ve just taken over managing our small 7 apt co-op.
Having only lived in NY a short time i was shocked to find our water bill for this year is so high.
2009 bill $ 5,675
12.9% increase $ 732
2010 bill $ 6,407
FYI.
They also say our daily water usage is 718 gallon/day.
Does our building have a leak? Are we overpaying for something?
is this a standard normal size bill for a 4 storey co-op?
How do people who own entire brownstone buildings survive?
Curious if this is normal as no one in our building seems to be questioning this?
Is it really this expensive to poop in NYC?
My mother is 89 and lives in a 2 family house. Her water bills are so high it’s ridiculous and doesn’t have a pattern. Her last one was $188. The previous one was $605. the one before that was $1001. You can’t tell me this is right. She doesn’t use a washer or dishwasher and doesn’t take showers or baths on a daily basis in winter or summer. She’s old fashioned about that and prefers to do just a wash up. No garden watering or car washing either. Why is her water bill so high? Can she get a refund?
We’re billed quarterly, and your rate seems insanely high to me, as does the estimate of $900 per year per unit. My family of four lives in a three story house in the Columbia Waterfront Neighborhood. We have four bathrooms, a laundry room and a dishwasher, and we paid $365 for water from June 2009 to June 2010. Granted it’s new construction and we have a dishwasher that uses less than five gallons of water per load, but I have a six year old who will stand in the shower for 45 minutes if I forget to set a timer for her.
We’re billed quarterly, and your rate seems insanely high to me, as does the estimate of $900 per year per unit. My family of four lives in a three story house in the Columbia Waterfront Neighborhood. We have four bathrooms, a laundry room and a dishwasher, and we paid $365 for water from June 2009 to June 2010. Granted it’s new construction and we have a dishwasher that uses less than five gallons of water per load, but I have a six year old who will stand in the shower for 45 minutes if I forget to set a timer for her.
If you are billed based on frontage, you are paying a 100 percent annual surcharge for the privilege. If that is the case; you should switch to metered billing. Determining the cost of metered vs. frontage is not difficult, all you need to do is pipe in any water meter that measures cubic feet after the main and see how much water it registers. The standard water meter which includes City meters, has six digits, you only follow the first 4 digits, every time the fourth digit moves up a point, you have consumed 100 cu. ft. of water at a cost of $6.76. The $6.76 was the rate as of 6/30/10 this rate includes the water and sewer charge. See NYC water/sewer rates at below site.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwaterboard/html/rate_schedule/index.shtml
I am assuming that your building is already metered, since you stated that the water bureau says that your building consumes 718 gallons per day.
The amount you stated is indeed very high. If you monitor the usage and fix your leaks you will bring down the cost considerably. To check for leaks, you need to do the following.
Look at the red triangle on your water meter at a time when no one is suppose to be using the water, like late evening. If the dial is turning, one of the fixtures is leaking water, every leak translates into a hefty sum, so you need to go to each apartment and check the sinks, toilet and tank, sometimes the water overflows in the tank and runs down the overflow pipe, it is difficult to hear it, the best way to tell is to shut off each toilet separately and see if the dial stops turning. Your goal is to get the dial to stop turning. Once you see the dial has stopped, you can rest easy, there are no leaks. You should monitor the dial on a regular basis, if you do that, your problems will for the most part be solved, to further save on cost you can change the shower heads to low flow and install water reducers on the sink faucets.
Good luck,
go metered, then encourage lo-flo shower heads (telling people it is better than maintenance increase and the building will pay for them), as people do new renos they will get efficient toilets. After some time you should see some nice savings. It will help offset skyrocketing taxes, insurance, etc that is biting everyone in the ass.
deanbh: several posters, in this thread as well as in your previous post, have brought to your attention that METERED water, billed on a quarterly basis, costs significantly less than buildings paying an annual FRONTAGE charge. Instead of assigning blame to DEP, maybe time to question your reluctance to investigate and convert to metered billing.
I pay between $70 and $85 a quarter for a two-family house with two people living in it. Haven’t seen what tenants do to that.
this is weird. We have meter and I can see the reading whenever I feel paranoid. I also can hear it clicking so if it clicking in the basement and nobody home – something is not right.
We’re paying about $500 a year for a two-family house that currently has only two people in it. The bill is estimated and probably exceeds our actual usage based on my reading of the meter.