Tenant wants washing machine. Might this give me a plumbing problem?
This is an email I got from a tenant:
I was wondering if you’d have any objections to me purchasing a small, portable washing machine for the apartment. The closest laundromats are drop-off only and the nearest self-service laundromats are several blocks away, so I’d really like to put a small washer/dryer in my apartment. The model I’m looking at is small, portable and hooks up to the kitchen sink. It doesn’t use a lot of water, is not noisy and has an easy drainage system, so there really wouldn’t be any issues with it as far as the apartment is concerned.
What issues, if any, should I be concerned with here?
starfish11040
in Plumbers and Plumbing 14 years ago
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10 replies
Hardcharger | 14 years ago
The fact that they wrote this letter is a sign of a good tenant. I would make them sign off, that they would never leave the machine alone. Also have them mount the unit in a base pan and add a water alarm. A Land Lord has more control over this situation then more dangerous items like a stove, or a bathtub, or a radiator, or a window air conditoner.
I had a flood through my light fixture from a neighbors shower. Moron kept his curtain on the outside and there was a gap between the tub and the floor tile i could stick a pencil in. This is a coop where someone who owns doesn’t take the time to caulk or grout. Lesson being it is about the operator not the equipment sometimes.
bowl-of-dicks | 14 years ago
I do wash and fold, 1 load a week @ approx $12, and it works out to around $50 a month. If you raise the rent slightly on the tenant, which is reasonable, I don’t see how they are saving any money whatsoever by having the portable unit vs paying for wash-n-fold *unless* they have massive amounts of laundry to do (which can be quite costly @ wash-n-fold service) and are simply too lazy to schlep it all down to the coin-op that’s 100 blocks away. Therefore, I’m going to hypothesize that this tenant will be running the machine A LOT.
donatella | 14 years ago
This isn’t anything I would want to have in a tenant’s place. But then that is me. My
own approach to mechanical mishaps is that whatever can go wrong, WILL go wrong
and I have enough to deal withm in life.
slopegirl | 14 years ago
I’d agree to consider installing real washer dryer with plumber to hook it up. I think it’s worth maybe even more than $25/month… probably costs at least $50/month to send laundry out. Those narrow stacked units can do gas hookup and cost about $1200 to purchase, maybe another $1200 for the plumbing and venting.
Master Plvmber | 14 years ago
If I can play devil’s advocate here…
Many of those small, portable washing machines have a 2 cubic foot tub inside them that most times are filled at least half way with clothes. That leaves 1 cubic foot, or 7.5 gallons, for water when it fills. So a wash and rinse cycle will use, if only filled half full with clothes, would use about 15 gallons of water.
Most older shower heads pass 5-8 gallons per minute. The new, low-flow heads pass a standard 2.5 gpm.
The math here says to me that using a portable washer once a week is the equivalent of an extra few minutes in a shower once a week.
Negligible, especially in a multi-family.
If you need a reason to tell your tenant “no”, there’s probably a better one; like that your plumbing is too old and small to handle the forced water drainage of something it’s not designed to take.
daveinbedstuy | 14 years ago
Why don’t you install a real unit in the basement and allow them access? It’s an attractive feature for renters and you’ll be able to raise the rent…$25 per month over 2 years will just about pay for a standard W & D.
How was the tenant going to dry things anyway?
landlord | 14 years ago
Assuming that for your renter not having the W/D is a deal breaker and you will likely loose the tenant at the end of the lease, your options are:
1 – with the portable washer make them also purchase adequate insurance that covers portable washers.
2 – offer to buy and install proper W/D with rent increase of $50 or so a month.
If is technically possible, i would definitely install a proper W/D. In the long run this increase the rentability of the apartment and you will keep the current tenant happy saving the money that a change of tenant would cost you.
Good luck.
MyGoodEye | 14 years ago
I have a 4-family with a W/D setup in 2 units. Just so it’s said, the W/Ds in my apartments are “good ones” not a portable sink-hookup.
Personally, I would not allow a portable sink hook-up in my building except, MAYBE, on the Garden level so any flood would only cause problems with the basement.
We’ve had no problems thus far, but since you asked for concerns… here you go:
Concerns:
– The phrase “doesn’t use a lot of water” doesn’t mean “doesn’t use ANY water”, so you will certainly see an increase in water use, and therefore, an increase in your water bill.
– Depending on the size of your house and water heater, you may see periods of time when there is less hot water available for showering. This can upset other tenants. To combat this, I’ve “encouraged” the tenants in my property (4-fam) to utilize their Washer/Dryers ONLY during “off-peak” hours. This also combats the noise problem caused by the washer’s spin cycle.
– The biggest concern would be “what happens if it floods”? You could run into water damage if the unit malfunctions or if they fail to properly place the drain-hose in the sink (assuming that’s how it drains)… or what if they neglect accidentally to remove the drain-stopper/food-catcher thing. My tenants with W/D HAVE to carry renter’s insurance with flood coverage in the event that this type of thing happens and damages either my property or the property of other tenants in the building.
– What kind of wattage does the dryer draw? And can your circuits/wiring handle the increased load? Odds are that the one they are buying will be fine, but it would be bad for them to try to draw 15A on a 10A line.
– On the matter of electric, if you are paying the whole-house electric bill, you will definitely see an increase in cost. If they have a separate meter, then forget I said anything about it 😉
If I were inclined towards being meaner, I might suggest that they purchase a wire-cart so that they may make their laundry-trips easier…
…however, there is something to be said for a happy tenant.
If you can get them to assume all liability for the W/D (insurance/damages/etc), provide proof of insurance and they agree to a small uptick in their rent to compensate for the water bill, you might be fine and everyone might be happy.
bowl-of-dicks | 14 years ago
First, your water and heat bills will go up. (I am assuming that you provide heat/hot water in the monthly rent) Secondly, portable washing machines require set up and tear down after each use which means there is an element of human error at stake. If your tenant does not allow it to drain properly into the kitchen sink, every single time, then the water will go all over your kitchen floor. Thirdly, if it has a failure (leak) on its own, water will go all over the kitchen floor which presumably does not have a floor drain like most basements. Therefore a tray/pan would have to be mandatory underneath the unit to at the very least provide some protection. Lastly, perhaps less important, the portable kind are typically on casters, not pads, so they vibrate like hell during spin (I wouldn’t want to be living below this, if you know what I mean here). And because they vibrate like hell, the set up job your tenant thought they did good enough on managed to fall out of place and on to your kitchen floor. (hey you never know!)
If it were me I would say NO WAY. Speaking as a tenant myself, I believe it is the tenant’s responsibility to do their due diligence, including scoping out the laundromat situation, BEFORE signing a lease. It is not your responsibility to accommodate a tenant that does not a) want to pay wash-n-fold prices b) schlep their laundry to the nearest coin-op.
Now ovbiously only you know what kind of relationship you have with this person, so if it’s worth it to you to allow this, collect more security deposit and a slight increase in monthly rent for the extra water/heat usage.
timber | 14 years ago
I had two instances in which those machines ended up flooding the floor beneath, This was quite a few years ago and the newer models may be more trouble free but I still do not allow them in my tenants apartments.