Vail Spa Condominiums is a 56-residence community in Vail, Colorado, that also operates roughly 35 of those units as short-term rentals — running a hotel-style operation alongside a traditional HOA. For years, water was folded into dues and no one looked twice at it. Then, a change in commercial water billing by the local utility doubled the property's water bill overnight with almost no warning, and the association closed the year with a major loss.
After deploying SimpleSUB Water, Vail Spa moved to individual, usage-based water billing, which brought water in line with how electricity was already billed. They also caught inefficient appliances (including running toilets burning 500+ gallons a day) within days of installation.
Customer Profile
- Property: Vail Spa Condominiums
- Type: Homeowners association with an integrated short-term rental operation
- Location: Vail, Colorado
- Units: 56 residences
- Interviewee: Jessica D., General Manager
The Problem: A Water Bill That Doubled Overnight, With No Way Evaluate Usage
For most of its history, Vail Spa's water bill was just a line item in the dues. It fluctuated seasonally, and nobody paid much attention to it.
"For forever, the water bill came in and it just was what it was... it was part of dues, and so the association paid. Nobody really paid any attention to it." — Jessica D., General Manager, Vail Spa Condominiums
That changed when Eagle County's water utility revised how it billed commercial properties. The change landed in December, right after the association's fiscal year had already started (and its water budget had already been set), and the bill effectively doubled with very little notice.
"Our water bills doubled, and of course we ended the year with a huge loss because of water. As soon as that happened, we started looking into different ways we could understand our water usage." — Jessica D.
The deeper problem was visibility. With one shared property-wide meter, management saw only a single number at the end of the month, and no way to understand where usage was actually coming from.
The Solution: No-Wiring Installation That Adapted to 56 Different Floor Plans
Jessica discovered SimpleSUB at a Community Associations Institute conference. Two things made it the right fit: simple installation that didn't require wiring, and a cost structure that worked for both the association and homeowners.
"Simplicity of installation was the biggest thing. To get into every home and do wiring would have been incredibly costly and really impossible." — Jessica D.
The association passed the upfront cost of the physical submeters to the homeowners, and covers the ongoing subscription itself — a split Jessica describes as reasonable on both sides.
Installation was handled primarily by Vail Spa's own on-site maintenance team, and SimpleSUB sent a team member on-site to walk the team through a handful of more complicated installs.
“Most cases are plug and play; easy for our onsite team to install. But with 56 individual residences, the piping is different in each one. Some units did have weird plumbing setups, and SimpleSUB had somebody come on site really quickly and walk through those tricky ones with us.” — Jessica D.
Results: Fair Billing, Immediate Leak Catches, and Budget Certainty
Vail Spa now bills homeowners for actual water consumption — the same way it already billed electricity — rather than folding water into a shared, opaque line in the dues.
"It's more fair this way, and more transparent. Now you can see exactly which portion of your dues you're paying for what — here's your water bill, here's your electric bill, and so on." — Jessica D.
Pulling residential water out of the association's budget also gives the board something it didn't have before: certainty going into budget season, instead of being caught off guard by another rate change.
The most immediate win came right at installation, before billing had even changed:
"We would have had no idea there was a running toilet in this condo that had been using 500 gallons a day, forever and ever and ever. We were able to stop that, target that. Great for cost, but also great for consumption, and for sustainability efforts. Especially right now in Colorado, we have no water." — Jessica D.
Unlike the utility's own continuous-use notifications, which flag a problem with no way to tell which unit it's in, SimpleSUB's unit-level data let Jessica' go directly to a homeowner with a specific fix.
"I could go to those homeowners and say, 'Hey, we know specifically your toilet is running, your water heater needs to be replaced' — these are the actions we need to take. And the homeowners were really appreciative of that, too." — Jessica D.
Stop Guessing at Where Your Water Bill Is Going
Vail Spa Condominiums went from a single, opaque property-wide water bill to fair, transparent, usage-based billing — and caught costly appliance failures within days of install.
“We've had a really great experience with SimpleSUB and we're really happy that we've included it on our property.” — Jessica D.
If your association is facing unexplained water cost spikes or wants a fairer way to bill residential water, schedule a demo to see how SimpleSUB Water can help.
See what your property could recover
Owners recover 95%+ of water costs with clamp-on submeters — no plumbers, no Wi‑Fi, installed in minutes.
