In hockey, “pipes” is a slang word for goal posts. A shot that goes “between the pipes” is a goal. In the case of piping and water/sewer rates, the goal for your association should be to have less water going through the pipes into your building, resulting in a lower water/sewer bill, as the price for water continues to go up with no end in sight.

While the price for water/sewer rates is rising nationwide faster than any other utility cost (new taxes in Chicago, higher rates for the sewer portion of water bills, the high cost of repairing or replacing municipal delivery systems, etc.), there are ways to make sure your association’s water/ sewer bills are as low as possible.

The City of Chicago water/sewer rates are rapidly going up, with an increased tax rate at 8% for each of the next 4 years, plus an additional cost of living increase. This means all associations will be seeing bill increases over the next 4 years. Many could see a cost increase of as much as $35,000 to $80,000 per year.

However, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Properties routinely see their usage on a monthly, bimonthly or quarterly basis. Even if your property management company reads the meter weekly, you still do not have the data that tells you what is happening at your property.

In today’s world of data overload, water/sewer billing information is living in the Stone Age. How do you get control of your water/sewer costs? You start with a water/ sewer assessment!

A water assessment begins with historical data gathering. Ideally, 24 or 36 months of bills are plotted to develop a benchmark of usage per month and a direction of costs for budgeting. Taken into account are the number of condos, number of toilets per unit, number of total residents, and all other water used, from irrigation, cooling towers and boilers. With a location (city, state, zip) entered, software is able to model the expected water evaporating from the cooling tower based on the historical local weather. Cooling towers should also be sub-metered for tracking. Often times, the water utility will allow a deduction on the sewer charge portion of the bill, since the water used in a cooling tower or associated with irrigation, is not going down the sewer. With the square footage of lawn that is irrigated, calculations can be benchmarked based on the local monthly rainfall for how much irrigation water should be used.

Modeling and benchmarking monthly or quarterly data is step 1, but it is only partial information. Next, a remote real-time metering system is implemented, with an online dashboard. The importance of data can’t be understated!

 Data acquisition with real time monitoring comes with an accessible dashboard and reports to keep track of water use by the hour, the day, month, or comparing it to the previous year. Real time monitoring can also send an alert to your facility manager that a spike in hourly usage has occurred. This could signify a leak, a cooling tower with a

stuck fill valve, an impaired boiler make-up water system, or irrigation systems that are watering during a rain storm.

 A review of water usage every minute over a 4-day period can serve as an alert to water leakage which is usually attributable to toilets leaking. Not leaking on your floor, but the flapper in the tank quietly leaking so you might not notice but it can represent a huge water use. Taking weekly or monthly meter reads does not give you the real insight into your water usage.

 When you get minute by minute data, you can interpret the data showing during every minute from 2 am to 5 am. Imagine if your property found that the usage was never less than 20 gallons per minute- that is a big problem. Keep in mind 20 gallons per minute equates to 10,512,000 gallons of leaking water per year. There are not that many people getting up each minute during those times to use the washroom. The EPA says more than 20% of toilets leak and that small leaks add up to big money. Recently, a condo building in Chicago with over 200 units, was found to have 8.8 million gallons a year of leaking toilets, which totaled $81,000 in annual cost. Without getting data in 1-minute increments, you couldn’t determine this type of activity.

 A site visit can now be performed to assess the gallons per flush for the toilets, and flow rates for showers and sinks are established by testing 5% to 10% of the total number of units. Toilets in buildings built before 1994 could range from 2.5 up to 4.5 gallons per flush. Huge savings are possible with the installation of new high efficiency toilets which lower it to 1 or .8 gallon per flush. Retrofits of existing toilets can also be an option for apartments and condos. Calculations are done to show the savings of today’s proven water conservation systems.

 There are water and energy saving systems for cooling towers that can be assessed. Sub-metering and monitoring can be done for a minimal cost to address problems that could cost $10,000+ if not caught right away.

An association can pay for such a project with their own funds, or can enter into a cash flow positive program. This may include having high efficiency toilets installed in those units wishing to take part in the program, at no cost to the unit owner, with the efficiency project paid for out of monthly water/sewer savings. Programs such as this one can be done for all energy and water efficiency projects. “The money isn’t in the budget this year” doesn’t have to be the answer. Money not spent to fix an inefficient system can never be recovered… and that’s just money going down the drain!

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