Water meter conversion

I have a three family house in Brooklyn. There are five adults living in the building, the annual frontage bill totals around $4,000\. This seems rather high. Should I consider conversion to meter and if so can you recommend a plumber who can do this. Thanks

owner8182

in Utilities 11 years and 4 months ago

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owner8182 | 11 years and 4 months ago

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Thanks everyone for the responses. I’ve now found a plumber. It looks like it’s going to cost around $2k to put in the meter and I may get some money reimbursed from the city.

yanks21 | 11 years and 4 months ago

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I switched to the metered billing from frontage and my bill was cut in half for a multi-fam building. It sucks if you then have a leak that goes unnoticed, but you can always check water usage on their website- really easy to use and even can break down your water usage/cost by day.

bk1lnite | 11 years and 4 months ago

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You should definitely switch to metered billing. For an 8 family building it was almost $7k a year frontage billing and now it’s about $900 every quarter. It was a few years back so DEP took care of it when I switched so I don’t have a plumber recommendation.

Augustiner | 11 years and 4 months ago

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By switching to meter from flat fee you can reduce the cost dramatically. The only way to get off the flat fee is to switch to wireless metering. For that you might need a new shut off valve which can be expensive to install depending on if your water main can be shut down easily. Make an appointment with a DEP inspector to find out if they can work with your current setup. It took me at least 6 calls, 4 appointments and 3 personal visits to the DEP office to get this sorted out.