Tapping onto water supply

[TNhobbyfarmer]

I am just starting a new house. When I contacted the local water dept. to get the water meter set, I got an unpleasant surprise, a charge of $3050.00. I was expecting more in the neighborhood of about 1/3 that amount. Just curious, what does hooking on in your area cost? Maybe mine isn't so unreasonable, but it sure sounds high and hurt spending that much.

 

[ultrarunner]

I am just starting a new house. When I contacted the local water dept. to get the water meter set, I got an unpleasant surprise, a charge of $3050.00. I was expecting more in the neighborhood of about 1/3 that amount. Just curious, what does hooking on in your area cost? Maybe mine isn't so unreasonable, but it sure sounds high and hurt spending that much.

In my area it is running just around $7500 for a 5/8th meter serving one residential home...

It's one of those things that they can charge whatever they want...

 

[Nissan197]

I paid 5500.00 last year and now it is up to 6000.

 

[schmism]

sounds about right. Call a contractor and ask what a wet tap for a service connection (1" line) costs.

If you live in a rural area, they recoup the cost of water main install by the hookup fee.

For instance, in my area, they are just putting in city water. Say the cost of the project was 250,000 if they had 40 people sign up to hookup, cost would be 250K/40 = 6250 if 30 people signed up 8300 etc. if the area could have as many as 100 people hook up, but only 40 signed up to hookup at the time they put the pipe in the ground, cost would be 6250. any person that comes along afterward has to pay the same amount even though the total cost would have been lower if they had opted to hook up at the install time.

My point, it may not actually cost 5K to hookup, but thats what everyone else had to pay at the time the water was put in so thats what you have to pay.

 

[Highbeam]

It's a GFC (General Facilities Charge) or SDC (System Development Charge) and is based upon the cost of your impact to the system as well as the actual installation cost to a lesser degree. Some systems are expensive to build so the SDC is higher. The operations and maintenance cost is entirely different and is acconunted for in the monthly billing.

In my city we are about 2500$ for standard 5/8" meter. 3800$ for a single sewer service.

 

[Bird]

There are all kinds of ways to calculate what the price should be to hook up a new water customer. Out in the country, our water company was a co-op and I served on the board of directors. We had one farmer on the board who wanted to get the cost just as high as we possibly could in order to discourage any more city folks from moving into the country in our area. Of course some thought we ought to hook up new customers as cheaply as possible to encourage growth. Than we had other directors who wanted new customers to only pay the actual cost to get service to them. It was supposed to be done as schmism describes above. There was also a trade organization that said, in a co-op, everyone "owns" a share in it, and that's true enough. So their formula was to calculate the total value of your water system, pipelines, meters, equipment, office building, storage facilities, pumping facilities; the value of everything the water company owned. Then divide that by the number of customers (owners) to see what each person's share was worth and charge new customers that same amount to "buy in." In other words, if everything the water company owned was valued at one million dollars and you had 1,000 customer owners, then everyone has $1,000 invested and each new customer would pay $1,000 to join the co-op.

 

[Flatheadyoungin]

when i moved in here 10 years ago it was $1000....

i called about 3 months ago about the property we are trying to buy and it was $1000......

two different providers......

 

[EddieWalker]

I ran a 6 inch water line under a state highway and 800 feet into my place. In addition to the road boar, I had to have the six inch line taped into a 12 inch line. I paid $12,000 for all material, road boar, tap and a 1 1/2inch meter to be installed at my home. In the future, I'll have enough water for a small city and also have a fire hydrant.

The water district said that I could have the materials at their cost, which is also tax free since I was buying it through them.

Eddie

 

[CurlyDave]

Whatever it cost, it was cheap.

My well was $17k, and after I had it for 8 months, I needed to add a filter and a water softener, which was another $7k.

 

[Mike058]

$546.60 for a 3/4" service. Didn't realize what a bargain I got.