Submitted by astopolis on Thu, 07/28/2011 - 10:42
Is it legal for a landlord in MA to install electric submeters on a master metered building and bill the residents for that electricity? As the landlord we receive one bill from the electric utility. We have been approached by a company offering to install submeters in each unit and bill the residents. Is that allowed?
A similar question on the heat side: can we install meters that track heat usage (via the thermostat) and bill residents for their heat consumption?
It looks like water/sewer submetering is explicitly allowed (105 CMR 410.354) but the electric/gas/heat side of things is less obvious to me.
Thank you!
sub-meter utilities
You can sub-meter any utility. You can even arrange for tenants to pay for their oil if you have separate oil tanks for each tenant. However, I'm not aware of any approved method of monitoring heat consumption. Let me know if you find some legal authorization for it.
heat metering in apts
We have similar question. Each apt is zoned from central boiler. We meter time water passes through zone valve and bill tenants per hour at a rate determined by gas cost. System installed in 1990 and never questioned until now. Is it legal?