April 13, 2000

Water submetering making a splash with landlords

Developers of multi-family residences and owners of apartment buildings are coming to a conclusion that agrees with conservationists: People will use less water if they have to pay for it themselves.

In the Puget Sound area, where more and more units mean less water to go around, developers are considering submetering their tenants’ water consumption.

Viterra Energy Services offers a submeter that sends out a radio signal with information on water usage for each apartment.

"It has a huge environmental impact of being able to reduce water and sewer costs 15 to 20 percent," says Kevin Marcinek, Northwest regional manager for Viterra Energy Services, formerly Raab Karcher Energy Services. Viterra, and its newly acquired company Aquameter, will submeter apartment units and bill the residents individually for their water usage. "We bill the residents, collect the payments and send the owner a check each month for all the collections."

In many cases, a landlord will pick up water and sewer costs, then transfer them indirectly to the tenant in the form of rent increases. "We have one of the highest water and sewer costs in the nation," Marcinek said. "The only thing the owner can do is raise the rents."

But when an apartment is submetered, the tenants are only charged for the water they use themselves, about $25 to $30 a month, plus a $3.50 fee for the billing service. Marcinek said that because Viterra is not a water utility, it isn't allowed to make a profit from the water, only the service.

The benefit to the owner is a decrease in water usage and utility bills. If tenants have to pay for their own water they are "more likely to report leaky toilets and faucets," Marcinek said. "People become more aware of it."

Submetering is becoming more popular in new multi-family construction, said Mike Scott, principal in Dupre+Scott Apartment Advisors. According to figures from last fall, "About 22 percent of the units in the region pass on charges to the residents," Scott said, which is up from 16 percent a year earlier.

With spring numbers due out in the next few weeks, Scott said he expects it to go up to 25 percent. "It’s well ahead of an article we saw in the Wall Street Journal that reported only 3 percent of the units nationwide are submetering," he said. Either there is something wrong with their calculations, "Or we’re just way ahead of the trend."

Scott said the growing submetering trend might be because, in the Pacific Northwest, "We’re just so sensitive about water."

Conservation aside, Scott said raises in utility rates are encouraging owners to submeter water usage as well. "One of the things that concerns the industry is the generally high rate of utility increases," he said.

According to the Dupre+Scott March update, water rates will go up about 14 percent in Bellevue this year, 20 percent in Seattle, and about 50 percent in the Woodinville area. "This is a good reason to pass on the cost," Scott said.

Viterra Energy Services is based in Germany with branches in 27 countries and offices throughout the United States. In the Puget Sound area, Marcinek said customers such as Avalon Bay and Trammell Crow are putting submeters in their new construction projects. Other companies using the submeters in their units are Continental Bental, Seco Development and Buchan Homes.

Setting up submeters is less expensive for new construction, about $200 per unit compared to about $300 to retrofit an existing unit. However, Marcinek says new technology is making it easy and inexpensive to put submeters in old units.

It used to be that the submetering service would have to hard wire an entire building, using a big, clunky utility meter for each unit with a person coming by once a month to take a reading. In the past two years, however, the system has become wireless. Viterra developed and patented the "Instameter" -- a smaller, compact meter specifically designed for submetering.

"We’re able to put a transmitter on this meter," Marcinek said. "You don’t have to wire the whole building."

The transmitter sends a radio signal back to a computer located on site. The company is then able to download readings directly from a designated phone line. "It eliminates the readers. It automates the entire process," he said.

For a retrofit, the way the resident is billed depends on building’s plumbing. If each unit has a main shut-off valve, Viterra will place a submeter at the valve to monitor individual water usage. It becomes more difficult, however, if each unit has several lines going into it. "It becomes very expensive to cut into each of these lines," Marcinek said.

If each unit has its own water heater, one option is to monitor the hot water usage, then estimate the cold based on the water usage for the whole building. If units share hot water, Marcinek said the only option is to create a RUB, or ratio utility bill. "It’s basically taking the whole utility bill and splitting it up based on the number of people, square footage or both," he said.

Viterra Energy Services & Water Sub Metering (206) 729-8252

A RUB, however, doesn’t have the benefit of crediting the individual for using less water. "You don’t really realize a direct benefit for your conservation," Scott said.

Viterra is working on technology that will make it easier to submeter multiple water lines in single apartment units, thus eliminating the RUB. "That will be a huge market opportunity," Marcinek said.

 

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Lisa Lannigan can be reached by email or by phone at (206) 622-8272.