The Woodburn Mobile Home Park in Woodburn, Indiana has reduced its water consumption by 41% in the last month. In the past, the community offered free water and sewer service to all tenants, and we quickly learned that tenants were abusing the service. One tenant was using over $1,000 in water and sewer serices per month because he had constant water leaks and did not care about fixing them.Because of this, we decided to install water meters on each home and monitor usage by unit. Ultimately, the tenants will be responsible to pay for their own usage.
After installing WiFi water meters, we were able to read each homes water usage every hour. Reading were uploaded to a secure web portal and analyzed. Based on the analysis, we were finding interesting usage patterns. Many tenants had serious water leaks and previously had no interest in fixing them. In fact one tenant was spending almost $1,000 per month on these utilities. Once we identified the homes with leaks, we offered to provide free repairs.
Later the same month, we again did the usage analysis and found the average weekly consumption had dropped by 41%. This was driven largely by fixing leaking toilets and changing tenant behaviors.