Adding A Community Laundry And Need Advice

[David Healey]

My wife and I are House-hacking a Triplex in Salt Lake City, UT and are looking to add a Community Laundry room with two sets of hookups for the remnants who don't already have laundry. We want to save as much money as possible with the installation as well as the running utility bill as we pay the utilities. So, my questions are these: 1. Should we install the Community Laundry as a cold wash only laundry system as its WAY more efficient than hot/cold wash systems and raise the rents a little ($30-$50) to cover our costs, or should we install a standard hot/cold system and raise the rents $80-$100/mo? Or do either and not raise the rents? The cold wash only system would not require an extra water heater and therefore, we'd save on the extra gas to heat the water as well as the upfront cost of the water heater and installation ($1200-$1500). Thanks in advance!!! -Dave

[Wade Sikkink]

Consider putting in a coin operated laundry.  Then you don't have to change the rents and the tenants can use it or not.  Tenants can be hard on common area laundry's so getting commercial, coin operated machines would be a better route to go.  Maintenance on laundry machines can be a killer, and if you don't promptly repair them, your tenants will be mad that you raised the rent.  If a coin op machine is down and it takes a few days to get it fixed, oh well.

Good luck.