Remote-readable meters in apartment buildings: why housing associations are switching.

The 2027 deadline – and what it does not cover

The EU Energy Efficiency Directive (2023/1791, carrying forward the 2018 rules) requires that meters and heat cost allocators for heating and domestic hot water are remotely readable. Devices installed since late 2020 already had to be; existing ones must be converted or replaced by 1 January 2027.

One point is often mixed up in public discussion: the directive covers heating, cooling and hot water – it does not require in-apartment cold-water meters to be remotely readable. When housing associations put those on remote reading too, it is a practical choice, not a legal one. The practical reasons are usually stronger than the legal ones anyway.

The main-meter gap: the cost nobody consumed

The most common surprise in a building’s water accounting is the difference between the utility’s main meter and the sum of the apartment meters.

The main meter at the building’s inlet is typically already remote-read: the utility records its value automatically, on a fixed date and time. If the apartments are still read by hand, those readings arrive on different days – or not at all, in which case someone estimates. The result is a gap between what the building bought and what the apartments reported, and that gap lands on the association’s shared costs.

An illustrative example: a 40-apartment building with around two residents per apartment and typical consumption of roughly 90 litres per person per day uses about 2,600 m³ of water a year. At a combined water-and-wastewater price of ~3.50 €/m³, the building’s annual water bill is around 9,000 €. If the gap between the main meter and the apartment meters is 10%, that is roughly 900 € a year that nobody in particular consumed – but the association still pays. (The figures vary by building and by country; the mechanism does not.)

When apartment meters are read automatically at the same moment as the main meter, most of the timing-related gap simply disappears. What remains points at real issues – a leak, or a meter that needs attention – instead of being noise.

Leaks show up the same day, not on the next bill

With hourly or daily readings, unusual consumption stands out immediately: a toilet that never stops running, a slow drip behind a wall, a meter that has stopped counting. The platform flags it and notifies the board or property manager the same day.

One of our municipal customers put it plainly after catching a leak of nearly 900 litres per hour at an end user: the fault was found and fixed within four days of starting – because somebody saw the data, not the bill.

How the readings reach the property manager

A remote-metering setup in an apartment building has three moving parts, none of which require new cabling:

1. Each meter measures consumption and transmits its readings by radio – in buildings this is most often LoRaWAN or wM-Bus.
2. One or two gateways in the building collect the radio signals. A single gateway typically covers a whole stairwell block, including basements.
3. The gateway forwards the readings over the internet to the platform, where the board, the property manager and the accountant see the same numbers.

Where a building or a single meter has no network coverage, walk-by or drive-by collection fills the gap – the readings end up in the same system either way.

Mechanical or ultrasonic meters?

Alongside remote reading, many associations take the opportunity to move from mechanical to ultrasonic water meters. A mechanical meter measures flow with a rotating impeller, which wears over time and is sensitive to particles in the water. An ultrasonic meter has no moving parts: accuracy stays stable over the years, service life is longer, and many models also detect reverse flow, empty pipe and tampering attempts on their own.

Ultrasonic meters cost more per device, but over the full life of the system – fewer replacements, fewer disputes about accuracy – the total cost is often lower. Divako’s device library is manufacturer-neutral: the platform works with the major meter brands on the market, so the meter choice can follow the building’s needs rather than the software’s limitations.

A network that grows with the building

A remote water meter is rarely the end state. The same LoRaWAN network that carries water readings can later carry heat, electricity and gas meters, and building sensors such as temperature or humidity. On the platform side, the same data feeds cost distribution between apartments, a resident portal where each household sees its own consumption, and exports to the accounting or billing system the association already uses.

That is worth checking before committing: a system chosen only for today’s water meters can become a dead end when the heating meters need to join in 2027.

Five questions to ask before deciding

1. Can the system later take on heat, electricity and gas meters – and building sensors – without starting over?
2. Does it detect and alert on leaks, reverse flow and silent meters automatically?
3. Can the readings feed the accounting or billing software the association already uses?
4. Who owns the data, and can you take it with you if you ever change providers? A system without an exit is a system you cannot negotiate with.
5. Who answers for support and maintenance five years from now?

If a supplier has clear answers to all five, the technology choice itself is rarely the hard part.