[Hugh R]

A little background, I'm the President of a 25 home HOA, new neighbors moved in and found out that the center "Island" which is a small mound of land in the center of the street with some grass and one tree is watered from their water meter. It has been this way for 30 years since the HOA was built, the developer was cheap. Anyway they want to get compensated for the watering of the "Island", its about 20 feet across and has 3 sprinkler heads fed from a 1/2 inch line at about 85 PSI. Here are her emails and my response.


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----- Original Message -----
From: Her
To: me
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 11:28 AM
Subject: Island Water Bill


Hello Hugh,

Mike finally figured out that the island water comes on about 3 or 4 a.m. for 10 minutes. The timer for the island sprinklers is on our front lawn in the plants. Our water meter on the side of our house spins when the island is being watered. For 10 minutes of watering the island it is about 783 units of water.

I called the Water Company to get an estimate of the cost. I spoke to April, who stated it is hard to get an accurate cost for watering the island as there are other things involved in the water bill (energy charge, infrastructure, surcharges and you get charged a higher price if you for over certain amounts of units (over 8, over 25, etc.). However, April did say that 10 minutes of landscape watering every day is a lot of water, and the cost for that could be close to half our monthly bill. Underline by me, yeah right!!


I wouldn't care if it was $5 or $6 a month, but it appears as if it is costing a lot more than that.

Based on it being watered for 10 minutes a day every day, and the meter numbers running at 783 units for the 10 minutes. That is about one gallon of water supposedly, and a gallon costs anywhere from .80 cents to over $1.00. So if a month has 31 days, and it uses a gallon per day at $1.00 per day, that is $31.00, plus factoring in energy usage, etc. it could be $35.00 or so per month just for the island.

From: Me
To: Her
Subject: Re: Island Water Bill
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 14:45:43 -0800


You may want to double check your math. The water charges start at $0.80/unit of water and go up from there. One unit is 748 gallons (which is 100 cubic feet of water by the way), so at the first tier, it would be $0.00107 per gallon. At 80 cents per gallon, I'd be taking showers in Evian, it would be cheaper. If it ran for 783 units, that would 585,684 gallons in ten minutes, or 3,514,104 gallons per hour. A fire hydrant is only designed to deliver 180,000 gallons/hour.


----- Original Message -----
From: Her
To: Me
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 4:16 PM
Subject: RE: Island Water Bill


I'm going by what April at Newhall Water Co. explained to me. Yes, I did have the gallon thing wrong, April did say one unit is 748 gallons - my mistake on that. April did say that water starts at .80 cents and goes up from there, sometimes to over $1.00 depending on usage,a dn I cam see that on my bill as well.

Mike said the water on the island came on, he went to our meter, it was at 391588.61 at the start, at the end of the 10 minute watering cycle, our meter was at 391614.73, so Mike said the difference is 783.6. I explained all that to April and she said those numbers are units of water. She said 10 minutes of watering landscaping each day is a lot of water, and is probably half the cost of our bill.

So obviously this needs to be figured out correctly since we do not know, and you do not know, how much this is costing and if we should be reimbursed, so that is why I will have the Water Company come out soon as Mike has some time off. Hopefully a professional instead of an office person can tell us exactly what the deal is here.

Until then, enjoy your Evian showers!

To: Her
From: Me

391614.73 - 391588.61 = 26.12 units

26.12 units x 748 gallons/unit=19,537.76 gallons in ten minutes, which equals 117,226.56 gallons per hour. Like I said, a fire hydrant delivers 180,000 gallons per hour. Something doesn't add up.

I'm more than happy to meet with the Water Company and you guys to figure this out.