In the past, condominium project projects were built with one master meter that would serve as many residents. The water and sewer were included as common area costs to the Association and then included in the monthly Association assessments.10 to 20 years ago when water and sewer costs were a fraction of what they are today, this concept worked well. Sub-Metering is one option for a way to solve this major expense and problem. Sub-Metering would place and meter at each one of our 15 buildings to measure water usage. At that point, the Sub-Metering company would handle the billing (or sub-contact that part of the project to another company). They would prorate the water usage across the five or six homeowners in that one particular building, measuring each individual unit as to the reasonable cost of the use of the water depending on the amount water used. The Sub-Metering company with then read the meters and bill the condominium and invoice our property management company. The invoice would show beginning and ending ratings and the consumption. A monthly service fee is added to the invoice.
In May of 2005, a Board member met with three contractors over several weeks for an hour each to discuss the possibility of this idea. This would be an enormous task and at and an expensive undertaking.
As mentioned in a previous post on this website, we have several different water valves which have been installed at various buildings over the last 30 years. The cost of excavating the ground to get to the water pipe and install new standard and “to code” water valves alone would cost over $4,000 for each building. This would be before the sub-meters were installed.
