Reducing Common Property Water and Electricity Use: A Practical Guide

As we covered in Levies vs Recoveries, common property water and electricity is the one part of a municipal bill that's correctly funded through the levy rather than recovered from individual units, because no meter can trace it back to a specific owner. But funding it correctly is only half the job. Left unmanaged, common property consumption tends to only go one way – up – and every owner absorbs that increase through their levy, whether they ever use the pool, the lifts, or the irrigation system or not.

Reducing it is one of the few genuine levers a body corporate has to bring the operating budget down without cutting a service anyone will miss.

What Counts as Common Property Usage – and What Doesn't

The boundary is simple in principle: if it's consumed inside a specific unit, it belongs to that unit's recovery. If it's consumed by the scheme itself – for the benefit of the complex as a whole, not any one owner – it's common property usage, funded through the levy.

Included in common property

Garden irrigation, outside taps and communal cleaning
Swimming pool top-ups and filtration
Lifts, gate and garage motors, intercoms
Common area, passage and security lighting
Pool pumps, boreholes and pressure pumps
Leaks on common pipework, before they reach a unit

Excluded from common property

Water and electricity metered to a specific unit
A private garden, pool or borehole inside an owner's exclusive use area
An owner or tenant's own appliance and lifestyle usage
A leak inside a unit, once it's past the common pipework boundary
Any usage already billed as a direct recovery on an owner statement

Where the pipework or wiring boundary actually sits is usually set out in the scheme's sectional plan – worth confirming before assuming a leak or fault is "the body corporate's problem" or "the owner's problem."

Reducing Common Property Water Use

Move irrigation onto a smart, weather-based controller

A timer that runs the sprinklers every Tuesday regardless of rain is one of the most common sources of avoidable common property water use. Weather-based controllers adjust automatically and typically pay for themselves within a season.

Cover the pool and check the backwash schedule

Evaporation is usually the single biggest source of pool water loss – a cover cuts it dramatically. Combine that with backwashing on a schedule rather than "whenever," and reviewing filtration run-times against actual pool usage.

Install a sub-meter or logger on the common supply

A dedicated meter or data logger on the irrigation and pool feed turns common property water from a mystery lump sum into a trackable number. Unusual overnight flow is often the first sign of a leak, long before it shows up on the municipal bill.

Replace thirsty landscaping with water-wise planting

Indigenous or drought-tolerant beds cut irrigation demand permanently, not just on a compliant month. Where lawn isn't functionally necessary, mulched beds or hardy groundcover reduce both watering and mowing costs.

Reducing Common Property Electricity Use

Retrofit common area lighting to LED with motion and daylight sensors

Passages, parking areas and stairwells rarely need full brightness all night, every night. LEDs alone cut lighting load significantly; adding PIR motion sensors and photocell daylight sensors on top removes the cost of lighting an empty corridor at 3am or a sunlit passage at noon.

Fit variable-speed drives to pool and pressure pumps

Pumps sized and run for peak demand waste power the rest of the time. A variable-speed drive lets a pump run at the lower speed actually needed for most of the day, and only ramp up when genuinely required – often the single biggest common-area electricity saving available.

Keep lift, gate and garage motors on a maintenance schedule

A motor running out of alignment, with worn bearings, or fighting a badly balanced gate draws meaningfully more power than a properly serviced one – on top of the higher breakdown risk. Preventative maintenance is a utility-cost decision, not just a reliability one.

Consider solar for common-area load specifically

Common property load – lighting, lifts, gate motors, pumps – is exactly the steady, predictable daytime-and-evening demand solar and battery backup handle well. Sizing a system against actual common-area consumption (not a guess) keeps the payback period realistic. Any installation still needs to go through the scheme's inverter, solar and backup power declaration process.

Making It Stick: Monitoring, Not Just Fixing

Every measure above saves money once. What keeps the saving in place is monitoring it monthly, the same way owner recoveries should be:

Calculate common property usage every month (total municipal usage minus the sum of unit meters) and track it as its own line, not buried inside the total utilities budget
Compare month-on-month and against the same month last year, not just against budget – seasonal swings can hide a genuine leak or fault
Give one trustee (or the managing agent) explicit responsibility for common property utilities, with a standing item on the trustee meeting agenda
Budget for the capital cost of efficiency measures (sensors, VSDs, controllers) as part of the reserve fund plan, rather than treating them as optional extras

Common property usage will never reach zero – lifts, lighting and irrigation are part of what makes a complex liveable. But it's the one part of the utility bill trustees can actually influence directly, and every kilolitre and kilowatt-hour saved there is one less that has to be spread across every owner's levy.

Not Sure Where Your Common Property Usage Stands?

PPSP tracks common property consumption as its own line every month, so trustees can see exactly where usage – and savings – are happening.

Get in Touch