A Simple Tracking Tool Can Lead to Significant Savings: of Water, Time, and Money
Water conservation is a growing topic of conversation within communities. No one wants to see major leaks wasting precious resources. However, the visible geysers and pools of water
indicating a broken pipe (See Figure 1) are surprisingly not always the largest culprit of wasted water in communities. In neighborhoods with hundreds of water meters the stealthy offenders are often the small leaks underground or at the meter. These are often difficult to detect until it’s too late. Finding them after the fact can result in a severely over-budget line item, wasted natural resources, fines from water management districts, and upset owners. Luckily for our office, these issues have not occurred, but the situation could have been drastically different were it not for a utility tracking program I put into place for one of the largest communities we manage.
Due to the results of this program in one community, it is now utilized in every
neighborhood we have the pleasure of working with. Though it has been an invaluable tool for each community, it has had the most substantial impact on water conservation in Haile
Plantation, saving the community nearly 20% annually in utility costs equating to nearly one hundred thousand dollars over the last several years. These savings have resulted in funds that they have been able to set aside for capital improvement projects without the need for special assessments or large assessment increases. Haile Plantation is a multi-association community with more than 2,600 homes on 1,700 acres, 15.5 miles of common area walking/biking trails,
playgrounds, and miles of right of ways. Because the utility bills coming in are comprised
hundreds of pages, and more than several hundred individual meters, untangling a water leak was often cumbersome, at best.
Leaks could go undiscovered for some time because there was no tracking system in place to assist the managers in identifying red flags. In 2011, when additional restrictions were put in place by the water
management district and the county, I knew we had to preemptively combat the challenge.
With the stack of bills for the community in hand (see Figure 2), I created a spreadsheet documenting every meter number, its service location address, water source, account number, and master account number. I then entered a Usage and Cost column for each month of the year with formulas calculating overall totals for the month as well as year. The spreadsheet was great alone, but we needed a baseline to get started. I therefore went through all bills for the previous two years and entered the Usage and Cost for evey meter each month of 2009 and 2010. As the bills for the year came in, I continued to enter the Usage and Cost in the appropriate columns. I was then able to revisit the prior year numbers to cross reference the amounts, keeping in mind that there were utility cost increases annually, to ensure that that month compared that of the previous year was not too far out of line. In addition, I compared the previous month to the
current month to immediately identify any large aberrations from month to month (See Figure 3). Figure 2. Stack of one month of utility bills for Haile Plantation
Figure 4. Meter box filled with sand
Figure 3. Original Haile Plantation spreadsheet with detail
This project enabled us to locate several small leaks immediately, as well as identify several meters that were unused and therefore not required. We were able to shut these down after monitoring them for several months, saving the association a significant amount of money.
In addition, we found several meters that did not belong to the association and even a couple belonging to individual homowners, but had been paid prior to our management to the tune of nearly $20,000/year for at least a decade! The leaks we were able to discern immediately when we saw jumps in usage astounded the Boards and it was nice to track usage increase costs for watering in new plantings as well. However, there was still a
Figure 5. Locating meters in common areas with GPS small issue when it came down to locating the meters themselves in the field when an aberration in the spreadsheet prompted investigation. You see, water meter service location addresses often don’t literally exist. They are approximated. Therefore, the information we had could get us close to the meter, but if it wasn’t readily visible when we got to the area (for example it had been covered by vines and debris over time), we would spend a lot of time traipsing through common area to find the meter to turn on the zones and discern the underlying issue. Many of the meters we had to find were covered in dirt, debris, and often the interior was filled with sand (See Figure 4).
This presented a new challenge I overcame by implementing GPS tracking for each meter. We utilized a handheld GPS locator in the field to mark the exact location of each meter and included these coordinates in the utility spreadsheet. Now, anytime there is an issue the work order will include the coordinates,
the vendor enters them into their locator, and they arrive at the correct location in record time to investigate and promptly fix the problem (see Figure 5).
The practice of entering the bill usage numbers and cost is followed through today, and we
continue to see huge returns on our investment of time and energy. Because the project was so successful in Haile Plantation, we expanded the project to every community our firm manages. While it does take time to enter, review, and compare each month, we have realized hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings for our associations, resulting ultimately in a deeper
understanding of our communities, a more meaningful relationship with our Boards, and increased trust in our services.
