On Wednesday, September 16, 2015 at 8:17:32 AM UTC-4, taxed and spent wrote:


This is a trivial matter.

It's not a trivial matter, unless you think rewiring several circuits
with a power meter or putting them all on a separate utility service
and installing two water flow meters
is "trivial".
----------------

you can use an hour meter or two.


An hour meter doesn't account for the differing water usage
between houses, how much is going for lawn watering versus
to either party directly, etc. Nor does it show the electric
power used. As Ed pointed out, you can buy actual power meters.




--------------------
Even if the OP can legally do that himself and has the
necessary skills, it's not trivial. As to the neighbor coming up with
a low number, sure she can do that, she in fact already has, so too
can the OP come up with some bogus high number. I do have some facts.
I've owned homes, paid for wells, pumps and municipal water service.
And $50 isn't an unreasonable fee for water service for a household with 3
people that includes not only softened water, but also half the expense
for watering a large lawn. The neighbor thought it was OK before closing,
then changed her mind 6 months later. If she wanted to argue over
how much the costs really are, she should have brought it up then
instead of agreeing, then reneging.
At which point, the OP could have said that if she wants to figure it
out to that level of accuracy, then *she* will have to pay for the work
involved because in his opinion, what he's already providing, the work
he's doing eg being responsible for the system, running the softener,
dragging the bags home, paying for them, etc is worth $50 a month
just by itself.

-----------------

And then the neighbor doesn't do it and pays nothing. Gets you nowhere.
And the neighbor has done some sort of calculation, looked up charts. But
OP is having none of it - a number pulled out of his butt is good enough!

Weren't you the one that said it was trivial?



What happens when repairs re needed? The neighbor would say that was all
included in the $50. And there are no calculations or other data to refute
it. $50 per month may be too low to cover all aspects of this situation.
But that is just another thought pulled out of the butt.

Weren't you the one that said it was trivial?



The real problem here is the OP is not telling us stuff. I bet there is a
recorded document regarding the well and shared lawn, etc. There must be.

I had brought that up and the reply was that it was spelled out,
but like you say, nothing beyond that.



And what else is she reneging on? He said she was "reneging on everything".

Too hard to work with a guy like that. Tell all, or get no help.

Yeah, I agree, we're only getting one side and a lot of info is
lacking. I also think that him saying that the front lawn is being
watered 2 or 3 times a day probably has a lot to do with it. I can
picture the neighbor watching that, thinking it's nuts, which it almost
surely is, and figuring she's paying for it.

The "reneging on everything" I would take to mean that she simply
stopped paying altogether. A decent person would be at least paying
something towards it. And if it gets to court, that's always an
indication of who the real skunk is.