Ways to Reduce Electric, Water and Gas Usage on a Property - Multifamily
I have spent a lot of time on this area in the last few years. We manage larger apartment communities that range from C to A class market rate apartment or mixed use buildings with most properties being over 50 units.
On average our overall electric bill per months is around 8400, water around 6500 and gas in the heat of winter is around 21000! My goal has been to reduce each category by about 15% or more. This could be a savings of 64,000 plus per year. I have had some ideas work extremely well and others....are still being tested.
Can anyone share ideas or techniques that have worked that haven't been cost prohibited?
Here are a few things I did this year that do seem to be working.
Electric - Pretty much across the board on all our properties we have been installing or retrofitting LED. There is an upfront cost, but after rebates and other incentives we have seen a payback that is less than 2 years. We most recently did this at a property that had 3800 a month in electrical expenses, it is a 67 unit property, with 3 levels of underground parking. After the LED was installed we cut this down by over half and lowered maintenance cost at the same time (you don't have to switch LED out for years).
Keep in mind this is only for common areas, residents and commercial tenants pay their own electric and in some cases heat based on the property.
Water - This is an expense that I think a lot of companies don't look at deeply, but is a very large expense that typically will continue to see rate increases from the municipality.
One option we have done is - charge residents for the water. Most properties are not metered so you will need to check with your local laws and likely use an outside vendor or utility option in your accounting software that automatically allocates the bill to residents base on size and occupancy. I have done this in the past, but it can open a lot of issues and in some cases management companies have been sued in our market for incorrect bills or fees that in some cases were over 20% of the overall bill.
Most of our buildings are very nicely renovated C class properties, but have to compete with similar properties in our market that do not charge for water. Here are a few things I have done, that I think has helped.
Quarterly unit by unit checks for leaks or other issues by maintenance. This seems excessive, but I have seen a drop of 3000 multiple times. It definitely pays for the time to do this.
Retrofit toilets with different valve fillers that reduce the flow by 1.5 gallons per flush. You can also add a toilet back or other to the toilet....this can be tricky if the resident bumps it and it causes damage to the flapper etc. There is nothing worse than a bad flapper/running toilet for your water bill. ONLY USE HIGH QUALITY FLAPPERS....never shave dollars by putting cheap or incorrect flappers in.
I haven't done all the extra low flow shower heads and low flow attachments on fixtures. Unfortunately most residents either complain or remove these.
With the above being said, I decided to go right to the source (main line). You can check the pressure with a low cost gauge (about $45.00). My goal was to get the PSI down by 15%, which I did on some test properties. We saw a reduction in cost, but also a reduction in leaks! When you have a high water pressure, this will increase the overall maintenance of the property as well. I used a flow reducer/control at the main line and can literally turn the water pressure up or down at the source. Of course a lot of testing is needed to get it right, but it did shave off 1200.00 per quarter on one property alone.
Gas is the one I am stuck on :-). Obviously keeping boilers or other running as efficiently as possible is the goal, but outside of keeping the temp at a reasonable level....don't have the boilers cranked up to high....I really haven't found a way to reduce this without putting I new windows or a completely new system or have the residents pay for it. Any thoughts?
Again, I would like to see what people are doing, especially on the larger properties. I think this is an area you can make a huge difference on the bottom line and I rarely see other properties take full advantage of savings when we are touring for acquisitions.
Looking for ideas :-).