Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: laundry machines - lease or own?

[Willow Murphy (willowm7]

Hi Marty,
I've been on the CoHo listserv and received this one about how communities
handle laundry facilities.
Do you know if our folks who use the community laundry pay the community
for the use of water?  I've wondered about it a few times, but forgot to
ask.  I don't do my laundry there; do you know who's in charge of our
facilities?
Willow

On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 9:21 AM, Carol Singleton <quetzal4 [at] 
charter.net>wrote:

>
> At Oak Creek Commons in Paso Robles, CA, we own our common laundry
> machines.
> All of our units have a place for stackable machines and our laundry room
> has 3 high energy efficient washers and 3 dryers.  About 15 of the 36
> households use the common laundry facilities and the rest use their home
> machines. Common House &  Kitchen laundry is done in the community
> machines.
> For larger items folks who have their own machines sometimes use the
> community ones.  We bought our machines almost 9 years ago and got a 5 year
> warranty which was well used - anytime anything goes wrong, they come and
> fix the machines.  We renewed our warranty for another 5 years after the
> first one expired.
>
>
>
> We have an informal tally system for people to mark their wash and dry
> loads
> and at the end of every month, I tally up the loads and send a bill to each
> person who has used the machine.  We each pay 50 cents for each wash and
> the
> same for each dry. About half the folks - usually ones who have very small
> monthly bills -  prepay and the rest just write a check for the total each
> month.   The money goes to defray common house water and heat (although
> most
> of us use cold water washes.)  It also goes to build reserves for when we
> do
> need to replace the machines - probably after our second 5 year warranty
> runs out.     Once a month, one of my other jobs is to clean the washing
> machine seals as these can get quite gunky if folks use the incorrect
> amount
> of detergent or sneak in non-high energy machine detergent.
>
>
>
> Our laundry room is pretty small so most folks do not fold their laundry in
> it although there is a small counter for doing so.   No one lingers in that
> room as it is just too small for more than 1 person at a time to be in
> there.  If possible, I recommend you not place the laundry room next to the
> guest rooms.  Ours are close to them.  Some of our folks like to do their
> laundry very late at night and others very early in the morning and noise
> from the machines can sometimes wake the guests.
>
>
>
> Carol
>
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