Residential demand meter

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Sierrasparky

Sierrasparky

Senior Member
Location
USA
Occupation
Electrician ,contractor
sparky 134 said:
The water closet only contains the six water meters for the six units. The main water service to the building is located in this room and it feeds the six separate meters.

Since this closet is located on the side of the end unit the easiest solution to heating the space was to tap into the end unit's HVAC system. How the builder got this past the Building Dept. is baffling.

As for bringing in a separate electrical service to provide power for one 20amp receptacle for the heater I know the association would never go for it. The costs would be very high.

I'm not sure how many of these six unit buildings are in this subdivision but there are at least twelve of them. The Kill A Watt plug in meter would be the simpliest way for them to monitor the usage but then the HOA would have to read each meter once a month, calculate the usage, figure out the cost, pay the end unit homeowner, charge the other five homeowners. Quite the project.
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Not that bad an option.
Here is the bigger problem. If that unit's power is ever off for what ever reason then the pipes could freeze again.
If this was in California and the building is less than 10 years old and this problem recently cropped up. That builder is responsible. check with the local AHJ.
 
S

satcom

Senior Member
LarryFine said:
Does anyone disagree that the correct fix is a house panel?
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The house panel is the way, and most likely they were told that by other EC's and just kept calling, trying to find someone to tell them, something different, we see this all the time, they call until they find someone that will do a cheap fix, not the right fix. The owners might try going to the city, and have the builders bond pulled to pay for the work needed.
 
W

winnie

Senior Member
Location
Springfield, MA, USA
Occupation
Electric motor research
LarryFine said:
Does anyone disagree that the correct fix is a house panel?
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I agree that a house panel is the standard correct fix. Further, it is very likely that there are (or should be) other loads that should be fed by a house panel, eg. hall lighting, outside lighting, common alarms, etc.

However is there is only a very small common load, I believe 'cheapie' approaches have merit, at least as long as these approaches are legal and fairly apportion the load. Separate meters mean separate metering charges; for a small load these could easily exceed the cost of the electricity used.

One approach common in Somerville, MA for common area basement lighting, for example, is to have a separate lighting circuit associated with each separate apartment, and controlled by a switch in the apartment. Not sure if this is legal in a rental situation, but it is very common, and it does achieve the end of 'the person using the electricity pays for the electricity'.

-Jon
 
e57

e57

Senior Member
Location
San Francisco, CA
winnie said:
One approach common in Somerville, MA for common area basement lighting, for example, is to have a separate lighting circuit associated with each separate apartment, and controlled by a switch in the apartment. Not sure if this is legal in a rental situation, but it is very common, and it does achieve the end of 'the person using the electricity pays for the electricity'.

-Jon
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Funny - I grew up there! never noticed that because I was not in the trade then... But go figure I work in the trade in SF, CA and at one point (back in the day - whenever that was) it was very common here..... eg a 3 unit building with a 3 lamp fixture out front with a switch for each lamp of a single fixture.... NEVER GET AWAY WITH IT NOW...
 
R

RCRosson

Member
Location
Thousand Oaks, CA
As I understand this, the tenant feels he is picking up the tab to keep everyone elses pipes from freezing. Rather than the expense of a "house panel", they(you) can install a individual circuit monitoring device that shows usage on that particular circuit. The client can then use the rates from his bill to show kwhours/cost and request re-imbursment from the HOA/Building owner. I just received paperwork to show a client this very same system for the following reason. My client currently has no way to effectively deduct the electricity he uses in his home based business. He works from home and operates several servers and other computer equipment. His employer will re-imburse him IF he can show usage. The external meter will show usage for the sub-panel feeding his equipment and will also give accountablility for the deduction for a home office via the IRS and State Income tax. The company is called E-mon. They are at www.e-mon.com. Check it out and see what you think.
 
A

AV ELECTRIC

Senior Member
Putting a plug in meter will work but that could lead to problems have to read the meter figure out how much everyone owes and collect the cash i would not want to do that. This could be a plumbers responsibility as far as insulating the pipe and meter or insulating the closet better. You could use heat tape and a thermostat to control the heat tape. Figure out what would be the cost for running the heat tape at worst case . Ime sure the owners pay a fee to maintain the building so the owner supplying the power can deduct the usage from his fee.
 
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