Residential Water

Residential water is all water used inside the condominium: faucets, showers, toilets, dishwashers, etc. plus the outside hose spigot, plus laundry water. Residential water use is controlled by condominium residents and is metered and billed separately from irrigation water.

Payment

Until January, 2023, when homeowners will begin paying individual residential water bills through the submetering program, homeowners paid all water bills indirectly through monthly dues. In 2022 the total anticipated water expenditure was $70,000, the single largest budgeted expense, representing 26% of the total budget. Typically, residential water (vs. irrigation water) accounts for about 40% of total water expenditure. Consumption is largely constant throughout the year.

Twenty residential water meters measure water per triplex building, not for each condominium. (There are separate meters for irrigation water.) Meters are read every two months and bills are paid accordingly.

Each homeowner pays the same amount for water through monthly dues, regardless of the amount of water used. There is a huge disparity in residential water consumption, and thus in cost, between triplex buildings, and by extension, between condominiums.

Cost

Each triplex building (not each condominium) paid $333 per bi-monthly residential water bill as a part of monthly dues in 2021. Yet, the average residential bill per triplex ranged from $489 to $171. Some or all of the people in buildings with high water use were subsidized by those in low use buildings.

Beginning in May, 2022, the board provided homeowners and tenants with bimonthly reports of water use per triplex building in the hope that that information would motivate lower water consumption. While some bills were somewhat lower, the overall change was not significant.

Impact on budget

The high allocation for water in each budget is detrimental to adequate funding for other needs of the Association. Costs increase every year to maintain and repair the Association grounds, buildings, and infrastructure, and to provide services. These include contractual costs such as our landscape contract and insurance, volatile, non-contractual costs like plumbing repairs, and large scale maintenance projects like roof replacement that are paid from our reserve account. Our latest annual reserve study indicates we have about half of what we need to maintain our common areas.

The Board voted to implement a fair and equitable way to increase funding to meet our common area needs. Please see the Submetering & Xeriscaping section for ways to achieve that goal.