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Infrastructure 🚰 Water meters in larger residential buildings

Hawkeye66

Hawkeye66

Cyburbian
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We have a developer from out of our state building a 55+ senior housing building with 35 units. Our ordinance requires a separate meter and billing for each residential unit. They have balked at this. Our council held firm on the ordinance. Now, even as they are grading the site they came back to us and said this was adding all this extra cost to the project and want us to allow a single meter. They said they are going to sub-meter their units then. For all I know they are marking up our water.

Is it unusual to have a one meter-one unit rule?
 
No, we have a one meter per unit rule. It also comes back to shut offs for us. If you share a meter and someone doesn't pay, you can't shut them off. In that case, if the developer is paying forever that isn't a problem, but generally they hand it off to someone, and it just becomes a hassle.

One meter per unit makes it easy to define who is responsible and easy to shut them off when they don't pay. I mean depending on the size, it is really only maybe $20,000 for 35 meters... I would like to hope that isn't killing their project.
 
Hink said:
No, we have a one meter per unit rule. It also comes back to shut offs for us. If you share a meter and someone doesn't pay, you can't shut them off. In that case, if the developer is paying forever that isn't a problem, but generally they hand it off to someone, and it just becomes a hassle.

One meter per unit makes it easy to define who is responsible and easy to shut them off when they don't pay. I mean depending on the size, it is really only maybe $20,000 for 35 meters... I would like to hope that isn't killing their project.
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Thats what I thought. Its a little fishy at this point in the process. Ironically they are from Ohio.
 
I'd go with one meter per unit here -- the additional costs for that in my fair city would be more akin to $10k than $20k, assuming 5/8" meters suffice for each apartment and a 2" can be used for the building as a whole. For me, it has to do with leaks instead of shutoffs though, as it doesn't take too many leaky toilets or dripping faucets to start adding up on water bills...

(NB: that's with the utility in my fair city providing and installing all the meters. For places that permit privately supplied meters, the parts-only cost differential is only about $700-800 dollars given that polymer-body meters are a thing these days.)
 
We also have a one meter per unit rule. However I do know some municipalities that allow apartment complexes to have a master meter per building, and then sub-meters in each unit.
 
We master meter everything. Once it's on the property you can submeter or not. Then again all our meters are out by the water main so I can't see how we would meter each unit on a large project. We also don't allow city water lines onto private property.
 
DVD said:
We master meter everything. Once it's on the property you can submeter or not. Then again all our meters are out by the water main so I can't see how we would meter each unit on a large project. We also don't allow city water lines onto private property.
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Does your city meter private fire protection services, then? Because I could see where your policy would require larger water meters than would otherwise be needed...say a 4 or 6" meter for a large building that might only have a 1.5" or 2" line's (or even less!) worth of domestic demand, but needs the extra capacity to supply the requisite fire flows. (High-rises are notable in this regard due to 500gpm minimum automatic standpipe demands that seriously drive up the total waterflow requirements, but it can be a problem for large, open buildings with correspondingly large sprinkler demand areas as well.)
 
Yep, water, fire, and landscaping all get separate meters unless you just want to install something big enough to handle it all.
 
Is this a proposed condo or apartment? If it is a condo, individual meters. If apartments, see DVDs comments. I think ownership is the world of difference, and as stated, you can sub meter all day long
 
One water connection per building here. Townhomes in the 'burbs often have their own water connection/meter since they're mostly accessible to the street and water main. Condo buildings and multifamily buildings generally only have one meter and then pay the water bill out of the dues or they bill the individual unit a pro rata share based on the number of occupants.
 
We ended up having a utility closet that has shut off valves for each unit. The meters are still in each unit. We dont need to get to them generally as they are radio read.
 
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