Water leaks can be expensive!

[Anonymous]

Many of you newbies have probably looked at stores where the owner says "believe me" the store does "X" amount of business a week. Obviously you want to verify that so you look at water consumption and try to back into his figures. One thing you want to do is make sure that the water usage that the meter shows is actually being used to generate revenue. What follows is a true story of a mat I just looked at.

I went into the store one day when no machines were running and could have sworn I heard water running. I stuck my head in all the front loaders to see if I could hear water and touched all the hoses to see if I could feel water flow. The answer to both was negative. So I had the owner show me the water meter. Sure enough I found that there was flow at just over 1 gpm when no machines were in use. After a little digging we determined that there must be a leak in a water pipe underground. Worse yet it was hot water, so a lot of gas was being wasted too.

But the story gets worse. If you figure that 1 gpm running 24/7 365 was "using" over 1/2 million gallons a year. We figured that the store was generating washer revenue at almost 5 cents per gallon so that equated to washer revenue of over $26,000 a year that you would expect just looking at the water usage. Add to that estimate dryer usage at 50% of that and you would have assumed the store was generating an additional $40,000 /year over what it is really doing. If you further assumed a 25% profit margin that would equate to additional net income of about $10,000 a year. If you were to pay 3X - 5X net for the store you would have over paid by $30,000 to $50,000 to buy the place.

The moral of the story is be very careful and make sure there are no leaks when you are looking at water consumption to prove a store's revenue.

Hope this helps some of you out there to not make a major mistake.

[anonymous]

I too came across situation which is somewhat similar. After I bought a laundry I was closing up one night and I heard water running. It took me a little while to locate the source which was a water pipe draining into my Milnor drain. I traced the pipe back to my dry cleaning machine. The dry cleaning machine was water cooled and had a electric operated valve that opened up when the machine started. This valve was bad thus keeping the water running. I am not sure how long but knowing the previous owner probably a long time. Since I underpaid for the laundry this wasn't such a big deal but if I had paid what the owner was originally asking I'd be pretty mad.

[guillermo]

This could also be a cause of my discrepancy in my water analysis.

I guess the best way to find out if there is a leak is to see if the water meter is running when no water is being used...

[pete f]

I was at my first store a couple days ago, heard water running in a washer. The valve was stuck open. Easy fix. I suggest looking at your dump pipes in the lint trap when no machines are running to see if water is still draining once in awhile..of course when you hear it it is easy, but as he mentioned, it could be in the floor, you may not see it.

[anonymous]

several years ago a day after I finished a new epoxy floor I was walking in socks (because the floor was not totally cured) to my back room. I stepped on an area of the floor that seemed warm and immediately knew I had a problem. Of course it was a hot water leak. Being a hot water leak is good and bad at the same time, with hot water you are loosing the value of the energy to heat the water and the water itself (don't forget sewage charges). I decided that if the hot water pipes were leaking then there was a good chance that the cold was also leaking, but finding cold water leaks would be more difficult that hot. I decided to abandon the underground supply lines and install overhead lines above my drop ceiling. I saved over 75,000 gallons per quarter after the repair.

[anonymous]

I would like to add that other than getting on your hands and knees and touching the floor to feel for temperature differences possibly indicating a leak you can buy fairly inexpensive noncontact temperature sensors that you can check the floor in the areas known to be above your supply lines. Be sure to reference an area of the floor that is not in the area of the lines so that you know what temperature is "normal". If you then scan the pipe runs you may find areas with temps. above or below the reference. To double check then use a stethoscope to listen for your leak.