Multi-unit water supply

Residential
1

Howdy, first thread I’ve made because until now I’ve been able to find answers to any other questions by searching! I’m wondering how you guys go about water supply while washing townhouses/condos where it’s all one continuous exterior but separate water for the individual units.

Do you just shutdown and change over for each unit? We’ve done that in the past but it wastes so much time. Occasionally when we were unable to gain access to water because it was in the garage, we’ve paid another unit $5-10 to let us stay on their water. I’m thinking of trying to do that more just for the time it saves, or discussing it with property management during the bid so they can figure it out depending on the different homeowners associations. I’d appreciate any more ideas for dealing with this. Thanks!

2

Maybe mention a rent credit to the PM for the units you hook up to

3

We washed a very large apartment complex last summer. None of the individual apartments had outside water. We ended up using the main by the office and it took around 25 minutes to fill the tanks each time. Looking back I wish I would have rented a meter from the city and used the fire hydrant to fill the tanks. You can get reducers that will take it down to garden hose size and usually complexes have plenty of hydrants! It wasn’t really a bad deal going back to the main for water. It gave us a nice break to sit in the AC lol

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4

Bring our own water for the exact reason you mentioned. Condos are 75% of what we do, rent a hydrant and use 2 inch fire hose to fill up, or contact ur local water department. Our city water department let’s us fill up for free at their water facility. 100 gpm pump , takes 7 minutes to fill up 700 gallons. With two guys running 4gpm it will last from morning until lunch, go refill at lunch. We mainly do this on jobs we can’t tap into the sprinkler systems. Beats dealing with bitchy condo residents about whose water you are using and blaw blaw. We show up with 700 gallons per truck to save time from filling in the morning.

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5

Look into using the Hydrants near by

6

Damn that’s heavy! Ha thanks for the info. That’s what I was hoping to not have to do but it really does seem like it’d lessen the headaches.

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8

One ton dually does just fine. 5 spd stick geared low. Doesn’t sag, could use some airbags though lol.

9

We use 125 gallon tanks and stay connected to hydrants while we wash

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10

I was pulling a single axle trailer with a tundra so carrying water wasn’t an option on many jobs.

Hydrants will make your dreams come true. So cheap and so easy.

11

Gotcha, thanks, I’ve seen that you do a lot of townhouse complexes so I appreciate the advice. I’m also an off duty foreman by the way :slight_smile:

12

Amazing!

13

Did I read that right? 670 gallons for $125 ? Seems incredibly high considering we go through 1400 gallons a day. Or was that a typo?

14

It may be cheaper elsewhere, I don’t know. I just know that was an $11,000 job and 125 bucks was a pretty cheap cost of doing business

15

I would’ve paid twice that or more for the time we saved.

16

How did you wash 20 buildings with 670 gallons of water? We use an average of 300 gallons on a normal size house.

17

Maybe it was 6700?

18

Maybe, but they only charged us $125 and the bill said 670 gallons.

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19

Typically water runs $6 per 1000 gallons. But I’m in my cabin with my boy watching johnny appleseed on dvd and cleaning guns and i swear I ain’t getting sucked into the forum tonight lol

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20

Get outta here! Lol