EpicFailGuy@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Most apartments with water included in the rent price (Sorry kids, there’s no such thing as “free water”) closely monitor their usage on a per building or floor basis. Whenever they detect irregularities they schedule inspections with the tenants to check for things like leaking toilet valves and such.
“free water” just means that they’ve calculated the cost of installing the meters and additional plumbing and determined that monitoring global usage and including it in the price of rent is cheaper.
Source: I have water included in my rent, I pay about $50 more a month than a similar apartment without.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 2 days ago
When I moved to Tennessee a few years back I looked all over trying to figure out where our gas bill was. Water/electric/sewage/internet, I actually got through one company now which is kinda neat, but our heater is natural gas, and I haven’t been billed for it yet, which never makes sense to me. I keep wondering if the management company just covers it or something, but I should see a usage bill I would figure somewhere…
Small towns don’t manage much though. They came by to do an inspection a couple months ago and I was like oh shit, they had not stopped by since I moved in back in 2021. (Guess a new management company absorbed them). I’ve got a chicken coop and put chicken wire up around about 1,000+ square foot and I was wondering what they were going to say about it. They never ended up even going out back. Next year’s problem I guess.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I bought a house two years ago and had a plumber come out to install a new water heater. He asked me where the water meter and I had to say “fuck if I know”. He said lots of people just let their water account lapse and then remove the meter and tap directly into the water line in the street and get free water. He assumed that the previous owner of my house had done this; I was pondering whether this was a bad thing or not when he found the actual water meter out in the yard under a metal cover. Good news? Probably not – it turns out my house water is supplied by a very cheap independent local water authority, but they had to go into bankruptcy along with the city and apparently some Saudis are planning to buy it to provide water to grow alfalfa for their racehorses.