Seperate Utilities On Office Building
I am looking at an office building with 2 tenants but just 1 water, gas, and electric service. In talking to the tenants, one big concern is that they split the utilities 50/50 but dont think its fair. How much would money would a person be looking at to split electric and gas service from 1 meter to 2 on a 4,000 sq/ft building built in 1963?
Base it on square footage? # of employees?
Well the current leases say 50/50 and dont expire for at least 4 years. One tenant is a chiropractor with an x-ray machine, and a couple other machines plus some office stuff. The other is a telemarketer with about 12 computers and a robust phone system that is on 24/7.
I was looking for the cost to actually put in seperate meters so they pay for what they use?
Cost would be a hard call to make on the board here. There are too many factors to consider. The telemarketer would most likely get by with a 200 amp service (required here even though you may not use that much) but I have no idea about the x-ray machine. And we don’t know how the electric system is installed. Is it already somewhat separated or is it intermixed. Just installing meters is not your only factor to look at. I think you are going to have to get someone to look at your system. From where I set, it doesn’t look good.
did you get a bid for the cost to re-[lim and run separate electric. It might be high in yr one, but over the year and for resale purposes well worth it.
Depends on the wiring. We did a service to split one meter to 4 and it was close to $25K for 4 meters, split plumbing lines, split AC lines etc. This was in a building not wired to code so they had to do a lot of rewiring and some replumbing.
If the chiropractor is now using the xray machine one can assume the service is already up to scratch amperage wise.
Why not call a few electricians and get some estimates to see if it is worthwhile?
I do not think you will get back what you put into this as far as separating everything out. I would just pay the utilities myself as the landlord and charge them each more rent to cover this. Then, there is no reason for them to be concerned if they are paying too much of the utility bills. Of course you will have to wait until the leases expire or maybe for the next tenants.