Faraway girl – Some considerations for you …… Installation of the water meters is only the first step. Then the meters need to be read.
What is your Council’s position on reading individual mains water meters? Some councils will only read the one water meter for the building as a whole, and then they bill the strata scheme directly.
In some situations it is up to the strata scheme to read the individual water meters.
It’s also up to the strata scheme to pay the water bill to Council, raise invoices to the individual lot owners for their usage and percentage of costs and then chase those lot owners for payment.
The way to solve this issue is to approach your council and request that they enter a sub-metering agreement with your strata scheme. Council can then read the individual meters and bill each lot independently.
NB: The link included in my previous comment offers some suggestions on how to write the sub-metering agreement and by-law for your OC.
Your tank water meters would not be under the control of the council and may need to be read by a local plumber. To save costs on reading the tank water meters the tank water readings do not need to occur at the same time as the council reading and could perhaps be less frequent.
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Apologies if this is not possible at your scheme. I didn’t realise that you were a multi level scheme.
Perhaps just the sub meters for the mains water should be installed and not the tank water meters. You may need a plumber to read the sub meters and work out the individual water bills if council are unable/unwilling to do it.