WaterFix as an owners corporation initiative
Topic: water consumption
Introduction
Sydney Water’s WaterFix service is normally the responsibility of residents, since internal bathrooms and kitchens are not common property. However the vast majority of apartments do not have separate water meters and the owners corporation pays for every drop of water consumed in the scheme. So it makes a lot of sense for owners corporations to pay for this service in all apartments that have not yet been ‘WaterFixed’.
Sydney Water now also offers discounts when 11 or more units are serviced on any day.
The amount of water consumed can also impact your consumption of energy. The greater the water demand, the greater the amount of energy that may be needed to pump it to where it's required.
Steps
- Identify which apartments in your building have not been ‘Waterfixed’
- Sydney Water will only WaterFix any apartment once. Some of your owners and tenants will already have done it of their own accord.
- Your strata managing agent or an office-bearer of your executive committee should contact Sydney Water on 1800 995 886 for a list of those apartments that have already been WaterFixed, and when they were done.
- Once you have that list you’ll know the minimum cost of having the remaining apartments WaterFixed. Check the latest prices on Sydney Water's site.
- Get the commitment and approval of the owners corporation
- Because the service is performed inside apartments and by default the cost is the responsibility of the lot owner or tenant, you’ll need owners corporation consent if the owners corporation is to pay for the service.
- Include a motion on the agenda for your next General Meeting – either Annual General Meeting or Extraordinary General Meeting. An example of such a motion is:
That the owners corporation pays for Sydney Water’s WaterFix service to be undertaken in each lot that has not already had the service, subject to the approval of the owner(s) of those lots.
- Notify Sydney Water that the owners corporation will be paying for the services
- Sydney Water’s standard procedure is to bill each lot’s owner for the service.
- Your strata manager should call Sydney Water on 1800 995 886 and advise that the services will be paid for by your owners corporation, and give them the owners corporations account number
- Also take the opportunity to discuss the characteristics of your building with Sydney Water to assess up front if any of the considerations (listed in the next section) need to be taken into account for your building.
- Get it done!
- This is where you’ll have to do a bit of work and how you approach it will vary from building to building.
- Each apartment needs to be booked in for the service with Sydney Water. Sydney Water will guarantee a half-hour appointment window per apartment between 7am and 8pm Monday to Saturday.
- Experience has shown that if you just leave it up to individual owners and tenants to book appointments for themselves, the take-up rate will be low.
- Don’t fight human nature. Find a way to make sure the appointments are booked.
- If you have a building manager /caretaker, he/she can be the liaison between Sydney Water and your residents for booking appointments. Your building manager could also arrange access to apartments if there’s no suitable time for residents to let Sydney Water in.
- If you don’t have a building manager you strata manager may be willing to be the liaison. Before going down this route, make sure you know if any additional strata management fees will be charged, and if so how much.
- Otherwise, a member of your executive committee may be willing to take on the liaison role.
- Once the appointments are booked, you can relax because Sydney Water will take it from there.
- Celebrate your lower water bills!
- Keep on top of future water consumption
- It doesn’t end here. You need to keep on top of water consumption.
- Leaks can develop at any time, and flow regulators, taps and toilets all require some ongoing maintenance.
- WaterFix can only ever be done once per apartment, so you should consider implementing an annual water conservation program to make sure you don’t lose the advantages of what you’ve done.
Considerations
Installing water-efficient devices in apartment buildings is not always as straight forward as doing it in a house. The following paragraphs summarise some factors that may need to be taken into consideration for your building.
Don’t let them put you off. It’s just a matter of having the discussion with Sydney Water up-front to determine the best approach for your particular building. That way you’ll reap the rewards, and avoid any problems for your residents.
Hi-rise buildings have distinct water pressure gradients as you rise through the building. After roughly the first four floors, mains pressure water will typically be no longer suitable. Floors above this point will need to be supplied either by a pumped supply from a ground, or basement level storage tank (which is in turn, filled by the mains) or, more commonly by a tank on (or in) the roof of the building that then supplies most remaining floors via gravity. The four or so floors directly underneath the tank in this second, rooftop water storage scenario, then also need to be supplied with water from a pressure-boosted system via a pump.
These different supply 'zones' within a building can present some challenges for water-efficient devices when they are only installed in some of the water fixtures in the building. The issues are amplified if hot water is supplied via a different system. Sometimes hot water is circulated centrally and sometimes there are individual hot water units within each apartment. There may also be other configurations. Water-efficient showers especially will struggle when there is a significant difference between the hot and cold water pressures. This is the basis for their incompatibility with gravity-fed hot water systems.
The solution would typically be to not install flow regulating showers in certain floors of a building where the pressure differential is greater than the manufacturer's recommendations. Other water-efficient fittings are generally not as problematic, given the potential savings versus the relative ease of adjusting the taps and the lower risk of discomfort if the temperature balance isn't maintained.
There may be limits to what can be done, but a start would be to try and track down the hydraulic diagrams of the property - these would show how the water supply within the building has been designed.
Typically, in the worst circumstances, only parts (ie. specific floors) of the building would present problems that would be expensive or difficult to overcome.
This site was made possible by an Environmental Grant from the City of Sydney