Your water authority will bill the Owners Corporation for water consumption.   As this is a charge to the admin fund, owners will pay a proportion in accordance with their unit entitlement, which is unlikely to relate to the actual quantity of water consumed by their unit in relation to the total charged out for the whole strata plan.   Is this fair?  I think not, as other services such as gas and electricity, and telephone are provided to the individual units, with separate metering for each unit.

It is possible to provide meters for individual units, but you'll find the water authority won't want to read individual meters for each unit when they can just charge out one bill for the whole plan.  So then you're faced with having to get some-one else to read the meters and bill the individual owners to recoup costs.  You'll also have to separately re-plumb the taps which relate to common property, and provide a meter (or meters) for them.  Now if any one disputes the meter readings you have to be able to retest those meters for accuracy.  Getting back to your original question, how much will all that cost?   How long is a piece of string?

Once upon a time our water was charged out with a generous allowance for each household before excess water charges were levied, but since the decision was made some years back to charge for each drop consumed, an inequitable situation has existed for apartment dwellers, where there is little incentive to conserve water as the charging is more or less invisible as the previous poster has pointed out. 

The issue of individual water meters in strata complexes is currently being investigated by a number of water authorities.

The intricacies of the physical installation and regular meter reading requirements can be quite complex for units. It’s generally a lot easier for townhouses and villas, and in many cases your water authority would be able to read the meters as they do for houses.

Individual water meters are also more attractive for investor owners after the most recent changes to the Residential Tenancies Act. The Residential Tenancies Act 2010 says:

39   Water usage charges payable by tenant

(1)  A tenant must pay the water usage charges for the residential premises, but only if:

(a)  the premises are separately metered or the premises are not connected to a water supply service and water is delivered to the premises by vehicle, and

(b)  the premises contain water efficiency measures prescribed by the regulations for the purposes of this section, and

(c)  the charges do not exceed the amount payable by the landlord for water used by the tenant.

If I were you I’d call your water authority and get them to assess the suitability of your particular site.

And the Residential Tenancies Regulation 2010 stipulates:

11   Water efficiency measures required for payment of usage charges by tenants: s 39 (1) (b) of Act

The prescribed water efficiency measures that residential premises are required to contain before a tenant can be required to pay water usage charges for the premises are as follows:

(a)  all showerheads on the premises must have a maximum flow rate of 9 litres per minute,

(b)  all internal cold water taps and single mixer taps for kitchen sinks or bathroom hand basins on the premises must have a maximum flow rate of 9 litres per minute,

(c)  there must be no leaking taps on the premises at the commencement of the residential tenancy agreement or when the water efficiency measures are installed, whichever is the later.

Note. Taps and showerheads having a maximum flow rate of 9 litres per minute have a 3 star water efficiency rating.

If I were you I wouldn’t give up yet, and contact your water authority and ask them to assess the suitability of your particular site.

Hi CBF,

Water usage in mixed developments is starting to become contentious, now that more owners have knowledge of how consumption billing actually works. At a conceptual level if residents start to question whether their levies should be paying for that used by water-dependant businesses, the businesses can then turn around and object to paying for expenses related to the residential  component (often many more lots) of the scheme.

In our building 4 of the 6 commercial lots are water-dependant, including two hairdressers. We’re now embarking on getting some facts before we determine if there’s a significant need to address the issue further.

The new benchmark data from Sydney Water is one part of the equation https://www.greenstrata.com.au/category/know-where-your-water-used (it’s the best available in the sorry absence of individual meters).

Our water consumption is logged and we can access data daily over the net. We’re about to install sub-meters on the feeds to the commercial premises to find out exactly what proportion of total consumption is attributable to them. What we find will determine our next steps. I’ll let you know how we go.

I know there are many issues with retrofitting individual meters to apartments, but I would think retrofitting them to ground floor commercial premises would not be that much of an issue. What does arise then if commercial lots are paying for their own water, is the need to calculate levies differently for residential & commercial lots. In NSW, perhaps the current review/reform should consider this.

Cheers

Chris

Thanks Chris,  looking forward to hearing the results.

Cheers,

CBF

Hey Chris, thanks for the update. I am surprised that the usage is so low.

Do you feel the cost of installing the submeters in your building was worthwhile? If you don't mind my asking what were the costs of installing?

Cheers

CBF