Water, fuel leaks can hike up bills

Real Estate Weekly, Sept 18, 1991 by David B. Suttergreen

Water, fuel leaks can hike up bills

Domestic hot water and steam return leaks as well as faulty domestic hot water system components are often responsible for excessively high water and fuel bills at many multi-family dwellings.

With water meters now required to be installed on the water mains, building owners can literally no longer afford to let leaks go unnoticed or unrepaired. In addition to the water costs, an uncorrected hot water problem can cost owners thousands of dollars annually in wasted fuel dollars alone.

Unfortunately, these problems often go undetected unless the tenants are adversely affected, such as when there is no hot water. However, water leaks, or hot water which is too hot are rarely reported by tenants.

Many problems are intermittent and even if owners or managers visit a building regularly, the problem may not be apparent while they are on the premises.

Information is Key

The key to finding these costly problems and correcting them is having information that pinpoints the problem. Consequently, many managers and owners are installing computerized systems, such as the OAS Heat Computer that continuously monitors and controls hot water and alerts them to problems as soon as they occur.

These systems monitor the domestic hot water system temperatures at strategic locations, and provide easy to understand printouts over the telephone to enable owners, managers, plumbers, and burner repair companies to quickly identify problems.

Following are a number of commonly found problems that building owners and managers should watch for an which can be quickly found with a Heat Computer.

Dirty Hot Water Coil: Dirt on a hot water coil acts as an insulator between the boiler water and the domestic hot water inside the coil and can also clog a coil. Dirty coils are often the cause of insufficient hot water, but because this is not identified as the problem a superintendent will have the Heat Computer automatically keep track of the amount of water used by the boiler each day by use of a remotely monitored water meter installed on the boiler water feed. It is then immediately apparent when there is a leak. OAS has installed such computerized water monitoring for building owners and found that they were losing over 500 gallons of water a day.

Faulty Mixing Valves: Computerized monitoring has revealed that about 60 percent of the mixing valves in multi-family buildings are either out of adjustment or broken, yet building owners and managers are usually unaware of the problem unless tenants complain. Often, however, the mixing valves are allowing the domestic hot water temperature to rise well above 180 [degrees] F. Tenants will not complain about this, but the high temperatures will ruin the faucet washers creating water leaks throughout the building and thereby increasing water costs as well as fuel costs.

The OAS Heat Computer tracks the maximum and minimum temperature of the water coming out of the mixing valve so that a building owner will immediately know when there is a problem.

The Human Factor: Even the best domestic hot water system is subject to unpredictable actions by tenants. A case in point is the recent experience of Dougert Management Corporation, a firm that is actively participating in New York City's Private Owner Management Program (POMP) for restoring run-down multi-family buildings to virtually new condition. At one building where the OAS Heat Computer was installed it was immediately apparent that there was a major hot water leak. This could be seen by the frequent burner cycling in the middle of the night. While a hot water system with no leaks will not require the burner to come on for hot water more than once every hour, this burner was cycling on every 20 minutes. In addition, the computer was showing daily fuel consumption for domestic hot water alone of 75 gallons per day, which from experience was known to be excessive.

An apartment-by-apartment check by the building's superintendent eventually revealed that the hot water in the shower of one of the apartments was running continously. To the superintendent's astonishment, the tenant had not bothered to report the problem for months. When the problem was fixed the daily fuel oil consumption was reduced from 75 gallons to 35 gallons, a 46 percent drop. Obviously the water cost savings were dramatic.

Currently, Dougert Management continuously monitors the heating and hot water systems in five POMP buildings. The firm By phones the OAS Heat Computer in each of these buildings from its offices to get a complete report on the performance of these systems, to identify water leaks and excessive fuel oil usage.

PHOTO : OAS is a manufactures of heat computers.

David B. Suttergreen Optimum Allied Systems, Inc.