Punched in the gut...

[Brendan R.]

That is what I feel like right now.

We are house hacking a two unit property that we bought in August.  The previous owners occupied it for over 50 years and took great care of it but did not separate out any of the utilities for the upstairs apartment.  That is part of the value add for us.  We plan to get that all taken care of within the first year.  I have an electrician who gave me a quote for $1000-1200 for the electric service which seems reasonable.  

I just got a quote from the natural gas company for $7800 just for running the gas line to the house.  Apparently the gas line on our street is a high pressure and they would to put in a regulator station to cut the pressure down to bring it into our house.  I asked if that cost was high and she said a normal residential install is around $1000, hence the punch to the gut.  

Right now we have an 80% efficiency propane fired boiler, propane hot water, propane dryer, propane range, even a propane lamp in our bathroom.  (Previous owner worked for a propane company when he was younger) We thought we would bring in the gas line, 2 meters, convert things over for us and add a boiler/hot water heater for upstairs.  I had around $10,000 in mind for the improvement.  My question is, is it worth $20,000 to do all this?  What other options might I consider?  

FYI, current propane use is seeming to be expensive and not desirably sustainable.

[Michael Le]

Don't do it at all. Just do an all bills paid and raise the monthly to cover.

Or just do what we do in the multifamily space and just keep it centrally billed and charge it back to the tenant. In large MFH a system called RUBS is implemented and the units are charged based on their size, occupancy, etc. With just two units it's probably easiest to just split the bill down the middle. Some months will be higher than others and the tenant has to understand that.