In Chicago, the price of water is nearly 1 cent per gallon (water, sewer and tax). In some suburban communities, the charge for a gallon of water is up to 1.6 cents per gallon. Many condominium communities pay more annually for water than for their common area electricity and natural gas charges. In Chicago a condo community gets a water bill every other month showing the amount owed and how much water was consumed during that billing cycle. The bills also included the following sentence: “Little leaks can cause big bills.” How true! Let’s think about the billing cycle for a moment. A property uses water for an eight- week period and then a week or ten days later, a bill arrives with no itemization of when the water was used, what it was used for, or if the building may be leaking somewhere.
Recently, a study was done examining the water usage at 15 multi-residential properties. They ranged in size from 100-units to 400-units. After the usage pattern was examined, it was determined that each property, to a varying degree, had a water leak problem. By looking at the amount of water flowing during the middle of the night (when most people are sleeping and not using their water), there always was a significant flow of water. Even when considering people getting up to use the
bathroom during the night, or someone using the laundry facilities, there should be a time when the flow is negligible. Some buildings never got below 2 gallons per minute. Several properties never got below 10 gallons per minute! 10 gallons per minute x 60 minutes = 600 gallons an hour x 24 hours = 14,400 gallons a day x 365 days = 5,256,000 gallons annually. That would be $52,560.00 annually literally going down the drain.
Until now, the water bill comes, and you pay it. Are there leaks? The answer usually is “We don’t know!” But all of that is about to change: What if you could see real time water usage? What if you could look at usage by the month, the week, the hour, or even by the minute? What if the building engineer could get a notification if there was an unusual amount of water flowing at any time? There is a way the usage can be monitored by the property manager, the property management company, the building engineer or board members. The information would be on a dashboard, accessible on your cell phone or computer… a Cloud-based Water Management program.
“LITTLE LEAKS CAN CAUSE BIG BILLS.”
www.cai-illinois.org • 847.301.7505 | 39
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