Navigating commercial utility costs requires a balance between managing physical infrastructure and monitoring daily water consumption. Since these fees are often calculated based on measurable footprints and usage patterns, businesses have several levers to pull. A professional sewer bill audit can help identify if your property is being billed accurately according to these metrics.
Factors That Can Increase Monthly Bills
Certain operational changes or site developments can inadvertently lead to commercial sewer bill overcharges. These might include:
- Expanding Impervious Surfaces: Adding new structures, paving over green space for additional parking, or installing large concrete pads directly increases the impervious area measurement used to calculate stormwater fees.
- Undetected Plumbing Leaks: Since sewer charges are typically tied to water inflow, a silent leak in a cooling system, commercial kitchen, or restroom will artificially inflate sewer costs even if the water isn’t actually reaching the drain.
- Increased Water-Intensive Processes: Scaling up operations that require significant water, such as industrial cleaning, laundry services, or food processing, will lead to a corresponding rise in sewer volume charges.
- Neglecting On-Site Drainage: Allowing existing drainage systems to become clogged or failing to maintain private catch basins can lead to runoff issues that might affect property assessments or local compliance penalties.
Is the Math Matching Reality?
Comfort Profit Consulting works by auditing these utility bills to find where companies are being overcharged. We focus on pinpointing technical errors in how the city or utility provider measures a property. By applying decades of experience, our utility audit checklist identifies where the math doesn’t match the reality of your business site. A comprehensive stormwater fee audit is often the first step in uncovering these discrepancies.
The team handles the legwork of resolving these issues through specific technical and administrative corrections, such as:
Sub-Metering Advisory: For facilities that utilize significant volumes of water that do not enter the sanitary sewer system, such as water for irrigation, cooling towers, or manufacturing, we identify these cost-recovery opportunities and provide the necessary guidance to implement sub-metering. This ensures sewer effluent charges are strictly applied to the water that actually leaves the facility through the drain rather than your total incoming volume, leading to significant sewer utility savings.
Municipal Credits and Rate Reductions: Every city maintains its own specific criteria for Best Management Practices. We utilize our industry knowledge to investigate potential permanent rate reductions or credits for features you may already have in place, such as retention basins, porous pavement, or managed green space. Our team reviews these local regulations to determine if your property qualifies for these ongoing cost-saving incentives.
Risk-Free Performance Model
Our utility bill audit is a contingency-based service. There are no upfront fees or hourly rates to worry about. Comfort Profit is only paid if they find savings or secure a refund for the business.
The payment is a percentage of the money recovered or saved, which removes the financial risk for the business owner. If no errors are found and no money is saved, there is no charge for the audit. This approach ensures that our professional review of sewer and stormwater charges is a low-risk endeavor for your business. You get the necessary leverage needed to manage your business’s physical infrastructure costs without increasing your initial expenditures.
