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What does Denver Water's 2026 tap fee cost a 480 sq ft backyard cottage (ADU) against a house?

research/house-adufees

What does Denver Water's 2026 tap fee cost a 480 sq ft ADU against a house? A flat $2,170 for the ADU against $5,400 for a house charged on 2,000 sq ft, from the utility's own schedule; Denver's own sewer schedule adds $575 (shared water tap) or up to $7,055 (own tap), so about $2,745 to $9,225 in all.

11 tests

What it found

From Denver Water’s own 2026 schedule: an ADU pays a flat $2,170 inside Denver from 1 July 2026 ($2,055 before), against $5,400 for a house charged on 2,000 sq ft, 60% less. Per floor sq ft the ADU is dearer ($4.52 against $2.70). Denver Water’s share is small beside house-market’s $16,930 “water and sewer SDC”, leaving about $12,000 for sewer and other items. Denver DOTI’s own 2026 sewer schedule ($6,480 per residential unit, plus $575 application and inspection) puts an ADU that shares the house’s water tap at about $2,745 for water and sewer permits together, and one needing its own tap at up to $9,225 (an upper-bound reading: DOTI publishes no ADU amount); about $5,500 of house-market’s figure stays unexplained. Two utilities only; the page does not say whether the rate applies to lot or floor area.

A figure from its own output

Figure produced by research/house-adufees: sdc_vs_area
house-adufees/experiments/sdc_vs_area.svg, written by the project's own experiment code.

Paper, code and results

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Produced with AI assistance (Claude). Results are from the code in this repository and are simulated or stylised unless the abstract says otherwise; nothing here implies affiliation with or endorsement by any lab, researcher or company cited. MIT licensed.