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.

 

[Flatheadyoungin]

man, i thought $1000 was crazy..........i really can't believe some of the prices mentioned here......

i sure hope they quoted me the price correctly......

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

 

[mjarrels]

I think I payed about $1300.00 nine years ago... but the fee has increased since then... Sewer (I didn't hookup) is really expensive!

mark

 

[dmccarty]

In one section of my county they are pushng county water. The county needs 10 households per mile of road. Right now you can sign up get access to county water for $500. After 9/10/2008 the fee will be $4,500.

The qoute that irritates me is "The big risk is that down the road, you may need public water and it wont be there. Your options in the future are very limited."

What gets me is that the county is pushing water lines in certain areas. Yet the commissioners are VERY anti growth. The last election kicked out the some growth is ok commissioners. But the water lines still keep spreading which does not seem to match election promises.

Thankfully we have a good well and the pipelines are in different areas. Not sure what we will do when they move our way.

Later,
Dan

 

[EddieWalker]

Dan,

You reminded of a situation a friend of mine back in California had to deal with. Crow Canyon is an area in the East Bay Area hills that sort of devides the bay from the valley. He lives on a few acres and had a well for water. A new development was built in the area and he was given told that he could get a water tap and meter for $30,000 at his house. He declined since it was so much money and is well worked just fine.

A year or so later, he was forced to pay for a water tap and meter because of some law that was passed. I left before it was all finalized, but the price had gone up and he said they were making all the existing home owners in the area pay for the line to the new development. He wasn't happy about it and the homeowners in the area had hired a lawfirm to fight it. I don't know what the final outcome was.

Eddie

 

[JRobyn]

Wow! Exactly where in middleTN are you? Gainesboro Utility District (Jackson County) charged me $610 for a 3/4 tap. Since I was running 2" line, I asked about up-sizing to a 2" tap and they wanted somewhere around $1800 so I just went with the 3/4. My pipeline contractor said that a larger tap/meter wouldn't be needed and he was right!

- Jay

 

[TNhobbyfarmer]

Wow! Exactly where in middleTN are you? Gainesboro Utility District (Jackson County) charged me $610 for a 3/4 tap. Since I was running 2" line, I asked about up-sizing to a 2" tap and they wanted somewhere around $1800 so I just went with the 3/4. My pipeline contractor said that a larger tap/meter wouldn't be needed and he was right!

- Jay

I am building about 5 miles north of Gallatin.

 

[dmccarty]

Eddie,

The county where my wife's grandmother lives ran a water line down the road. The family owns hundreds of acres of land, not sure how much, they wont tell me. But its a mile of road frontage on a major road and the land goes back to a river. It would make a real huge development. Since everyone is on wells, why would the county run water out that way.....

Anywho, my understanding is that she was forced to hook up to the water line which cost $5,000.

Later,
Dan

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

I was lucky, the city had ran a line out to the airport past my house. I was able to hook up for right at $1000 for 3/4"

If it wasn't for the city water line, I'd would've had to tap into the county which is a municipal development. I think the cost is up around $3000-3500

 

[Paddy]

I did a live tap on our private system, 1". I did this last year and the parts were $500 to $600 at HD water works. A city utility will not likely allow you to mess with their main. It took a day or two to get it installed another day to repair my neighboors line I cut trenching in mine!!

Patrick T

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I know of an instance where someone did a wet tap on a 15KV power line conduit....