Close to a fifth of the United States population lives in multi-family rental housing. Most of these residents do not pay a water bill. Water charges are embedded in their rent and residents are usually free to use as much water as they wish without additional charge.
Water represents a significant amount of the cost involved in operating multi-family housing. In addition to the actual cost of water are associated costs for the treatment of wastewater and the energy required to heat the water. These expenses are likely to increase as groundwater and surface water reserves dwindle, energy costs rise, and treatment requirements become more stringent.
This guidebook is intended to help owners and managers of multi-family properties address these challenges through water conservation. A companion guidebook directed to engineers, contractors, and others responsible for the actual design and implementation of water conservation retrofit strategies is also available from HUD.
Two types of water conservation strategies are generally recognized:
- Behavioral changes to educate and motivate people to become conservation-conscious and engage in conserving practices
- Hardware measures to modify, repair, or remove/replace water-using fixtures or appliances.
This guidebook refers to hardware measures as retrofit strategies.
Where tenant incentive to conserve water may be lacking, owners/managers of multifamily properties must rely on retrofit strategies to reduce water consumption and associated operating costs.
Lowering water use in older multi-family properties presents some challenges. Extensive renovation may not be economically viable for the many properties whose housing units have obsolete, non-conserving water fixtures and appliances. Retrofit strategies, on the other hand, are less invasive and may be better suited for older structures.
Retrofit strategies include the repair/and or replacement of showerheads, faucets, toilets, clothes washers, water meters, irrigation systems, and other features. Specific measures may range in complexity from simply screwing an aerator on a faucet to installing gray water systems that require storage tanks, filters, pumps, and pipes.
Prepared for:
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Office of Policy Development and Research
Washington, D.C.
Prepared by:
Water Resources Engineering, Inc.
San Francisco, CA
53 pages