Flat-rate water billing removes incentives to conserve, leading residents to waste water and ignore leaks. A leaking toilet flapper can cost thousands monthly, but the fix costs a few dollars. Usage-based billing encourages accountability and catches problems faster than traditional utility company systems.
Chapters
If you know that your bill is not going to change, your water use is going to change, meaning you're not going to care whether you turn off the sink while you're brushing your teeth, or you do a load of laundry with 2 pieces of clothing in there, or run the dishwasher with 4 dishes in there. It's only when that bill fluctuates based upon the property's usage that does that actually modify the behavior of the resident. You want the resident to think that my usage and my consumption is going to change my bill. But also the service side of working with these service companies is giving them your bills. They're giving you pre-bills back. You're sending them questions back. They're sending you questions back. That back and forth really delays a lot of time, provides a lot of headache. And so that's why a DIY platform or a platform that you're doing yourself, you're not having that back and forth. You're dealing with it yourself. You can see immediately, did my water bill go up and change that kind of owner's portion or common area deduction? You can change that on the fly and you're not going back and forth with a company. But doing it as a flat rate, although it sounds appealing as an owner because it sounds easy, you're actually not incentivizing your residents to conserve. And that really should be the driver, is not only do you want your residents to conserve, that brings the property bill down. But it allows them to start taking accountability for their usage and modifying their behavior because of that.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And also, I can see how it will be detrimental to reporting water issues. So if you have a runny toilet, you wouldn't report it, even though that's a common thing we see anyways.
They report it. Leaky toilet can cost thousands of dollars at the end of the month just for a flapper being broken. That's a quick $5 fix. So you want them to again take that accountability and responsibility for their usage and make them think about that when they're using water or hearing their toilet run at night. You want them thinking about that because it will change their bill even if it fluctuates $5 or $10.
