Which Water Tariff Applies to a Badung Home or Small Rental Property?

Two properties in Badung can register the same water consumption yet receive different charges because their water accounts belong to different customer classes. The relevant utility is Perumda Air Minum Tirta Mangutama, commonly referred to as the local PDAM. Badung Regent Decision No. 1058/01/HK/2025, issued on 31 December 2025 and effective from 1 January 2026, provides the rate schedule in Annex I and the classification rules in Annex II. Its reach is specific: it concerns Tirta Mangutama customers in Badung, not every water supplier on Bali: Denpasar and Gianyar have separate providers and conditions. A house served by a private well, a delivery truck or a shared account also needs a different explanation of its actual water costs.

Annex II distinguishes four domestic customer classes by installed electricity capacity. R1 covers households with 450 or 900 volt-amperes (VA), R2 with 1,300 VA, R3 with 2,200 VA, and R4 with more than 2,200 VA. Capacity is not the number of electricity units consumed in a month. A PLN electricity bill or connection record can help establish the applicable capacity, but PLN is the electricity provider, not the authority assigning a water-account class. The question for a renter or buyer is what Tirta Mangutama has actually recorded against that meter.

Businesses are classified on different terms. Usaha I, coded U1, expressly includes accommodation businesses with fewer than ten rooms; it is not a label for everything described online as a rental villa. Annex II also places medium- and large-scale accommodation in Usaha III and Usaha IV. Those distinctions make the nature and scale of the operation relevant, but they do not allow a reader to determine the category of an individual property from its listing. A pool, a luxury finish and a high nightly rate tell you nothing conclusive about the registered account.

The best evidence is the current Tirta Mangutama invoice or an account-specific statement showing the class, account holder and meter address. The installed electrical capacity, actual property use, guest-room count and any shared or separate connections provide context for questions to the utility. A villa might be connected through an account held by the owner, a property manager or a larger site; a water meter on the wall does not resolve those contractual details. If the use of a building changes, ask how its class should be recorded instead of assuming the tariff switches on the date of the first guest booking. Customer classifications also establish no independent right to operate short-stay accommodation.

The 2026 schedule in Annex I charges water in Indonesian rupiah per cubic metre, with a separate monthly fixed subscription charge. Each registered account moves through three incremental consumption blocks: 0–10 m³ at Block I rates, the next amount above 10 and up to 20 m³ at Block II rates, and anything over 20 m³ at Block III rates. The unit price varies with the customer class. Tirta Mangutama also charges Beban Tetap Berlangganan of Rp13,000 per customer per month. This fixed amount is added to the usage calculation; it is not another marginal rate.

Take exactly 25 m³ measured in one billing period. Ten cubic metres fall into the first band, ten into the second and five into the third. For a confirmed R4 account, the arithmetic is (10 × Rp4,749) + (10 × Rp8,165) + (5 × Rp8,743) + Rp13,000 = Rp185,855. The corresponding U1 tariff-only amount is (10 × Rp6,532) + (10 × Rp8,492) + (5 × Rp8,832) + Rp13,000 = Rp207,400. Their Rp21,545 difference shows what classification alone changes at the same volume. It is not a universal rental-villa surcharge, and the third-block price must not be multiplied by all 25 cubic metres.

For any non-negative consumption V, use: bill(V) = Rp13,000 + min(V,10) × Block I rate + max(0,min(V−10,10)) × Block II rate + max(0,V−20) × Block III rate. Here min selects the smaller number, max the larger, and all three rates must come from the same verified customer class. At 12 m³ the second band applies to two cubic metres only, while the third band contributes nothing. At zero registered consumption the tariff-only model still includes the monthly fixed charge for an active customer account. It does not prove whether a particular invoice carries adjustments or other separately documented charges.

The 2026 block rates, ordered I / II / III in Rp/m³, are R1: 2,235 / 5,716 / 6,002; R2: 3,073 / 6,941 / 8,569; R3: 3,911 / 7,757 / 8,656; R4: 4,749 / 8,165 / 8,743; and U1: 6,532 / 8,492 / 8,832. These triplets let you substitute the meter’s actual volume into the formula. A single “price per cubic metre” is misleading because the bill combines several prices and a fixed charge. Neither the example volume nor the resulting total is a statistical average for homes, holiday lets or guest houses.

The five-row comparison below keeps consumption, month and tariff rules constant. Every amount includes the Rp13,000 monthly charge. It excludes charges that might need to be reconciled against a real bill, changes in reading periods, and any cost of a separate water source. If a site has two independent Tirta Mangutama accounts, calculate each one with its own verified class and readings before adding the invoices. If several villas merely have internal sub-meters beneath one official meter, splitting the shared total into artificial individual tariff blocks will not reproduce what the utility bills.

Tirta Mangutama 2026 rates, effective 1 January: 25 m³ in one month = 10 m³ at Block I + 10 at Block II + 5 at Block III + Rp13,000 fixed charge. Figures are tariff-only illustrations, subject to confirmation of the registered account class.

Hosting paying guests changes the questions a buyer or operator needs to ask about a water connection. Annex II includes accommodation businesses with fewer than ten rooms within U1, but it does not say that an online villa listing automatically converts a domestic water account into a business account. Medium- and large-scale accommodation appear in the utility's descriptions of U3 and U4. A property’s commercial use may be relevant to its classification; the utility’s recorded decision is still necessary. Whether a home is occupied by its owner, rented for holidays or used in both ways cannot be established from its marketing photographs.

Consider a hypothetical four-bedroom property with one meter. Having fewer than ten guest rooms makes U1 a class worth asking Tirta Mangutama about, not a class the owner may assume has already been applied. With 25 m³ of water, the published U1 example is Rp207,400, while a genuinely registered R4 account would produce Rp185,855 under the same tariff model. Neither number can be presented as that property's real invoice without its billing records. If a compound has one registered account for the owner's house and another for guest accommodation, the two meters must be priced separately using their respective classes and readings. Shared buildings are not necessarily shared utility accounts.

The financial arrangement between guests and owners is another layer entirely. A rental agreement may include water in the price, pass through the actual invoice or apply a separately negotiated allowance. Those arrangements determine who pays, not which customer class the utility uses. The water supply serving bedrooms, kitchens, the garden and the pool may pass through one official meter; alternatively, some uses may rely on delivered or stored water. Asking whether a pool is “included” tells you little until you know its water source and the agreed cost allocation.

An internal sub-meter is particularly easy to misunderstand. It can measure one tenant's or villa's consumption for settlement with a landlord, yet Tirta Mangutama may still bill the entire complex through one registered meter. Two tenants each using 10 m³ do not thereby acquire two independent first-block allowances or two separate fixed charges on the utility invoice. A manager may apportion costs by sub-meter, an agreed rate or a share of the common bill; the correct answer comes from the rental or management contract and the official account records. The starting and ending readings for the guest stay should be documented if actual use drives payment.

For underwriting a small rental business, an allowance advertised by the landlord is therefore different from the utility's invoice. The owner may absorb a higher bill, or a renter may be responsible for agreed extra consumption regardless of the underlying class. Nor does a U1 entry prove that a premises has all permits required to host guests; tariff classification and accommodation law are separate subjects. A meaningful budget needs the registered account, the contract's payment responsibilities, the measured volume and an explanation of any other source feeding the building.

A property without its own Tirta Mangutama connection faces an initial cost question that the 2026 consumption tariff cannot answer. Badung's public-services portal, MPP, lists an online procedure called Pendaftaran Sambungan Langganan for customer connection applications. The entry says Tarif Pelayanan: Gratis, or free of charge. That is the stated price of the registration service. It should never be read as a quotation of zero for excavation, pipework, installation or whatever connection works the location may require.

The published application asks for a photograph of a KTP identity document and evidence of an electricity bill. The form also collects the applicant's name, address and telephone number, intended use (peruntukan), any alternative water sources, the district, village and banjar, and the proposed connection location. A banjar is a local community or administrative neighbourhood reference that helps identify the site. For an international buyer or tenant, the page does not explain how an applicant without the listed KTP requirement should proceed. The identity of the account holder and acceptable paperwork have to be settled with the provider or the property owner instead of assuming a passport is an approved substitute.

Once the location and proposed works have been assessed, the important price document is the RAB, an itemised work estimate. MPP provides no single RAB amount for every Badung house. A building may require a different connection route or additional work, and the existence of a nearby pipe alone does not establish technical eligibility. The written estimate should make clear the proposed work, payment recipient and which sections of pipe or equipment fall inside the utility's scope. Private plumbing, a booster pump, a storage tank or repairs within the property could require separate arrangements, depending on the installation; the public page does not assign a mandatory price to any of them.

The portal's six-working-day statement is often the most consequential part of the timeline. It begins from payment of the RAB, not from clicking Submit on the application. The portal does not publish a duration for assessing network feasibility, preparing the estimate or resolving location-specific problems before payment. Nor can the published post-payment stage be treated as a guaranteed completion date for every property regardless of physical conditions. Someone planning handover or the start of a rental operation needs a project-specific sequence: application, technical assessment, quotation, acceptance and payment, then the stated work stage.

An installed meter is a useful milestone but it is not the entire water budget. A customer may also face separately agreed internal piping, storage, pump maintenance or emergency deliveries, none of which belongs automatically in the Rp/m³ tariff. Owners and tenants can allocate some of those costs by contract, so the party named on the account need not be the party ultimately bearing every expense. Keep the free registration service, the as-yet-unknown RAB and future utility bills as three separate amounts. Promotional connection offers, if encountered, must be checked for their own eligibility dates and terms before they enter a property budget.

A meter and an active utility account establish how water is measured and charged. They do not establish that taps at a particular property will run without interruption. On 15 May 2026, Tirta Mangutama posted a notice concerning repair of a leaking valve around Tegeh Sari, with works estimated for 15–17 May. The named affected areas included Ungasan, Masuka, Pecatu and Balangan. Another notice, published on 4 August, scheduled interconnection work for 5–7 August near Nusa Dua and referred to Sawangan, Kampial, Jalan Darmawangsa, Gunung Payung and surrounding localities.

Those notices show the value of address-specific information. They are historical work announcements, not a frequency estimate, outage forecast or reliability ranking for southern Badung. A home nearby might have a different service line, an independent source of water or a storage system that changes what residents experience during network work. Before accepting a landlord's assertion that supply is reliable, establish which street and meter the statement describes. A dated account from the property manager can be informative, but it is not equivalent to a utility service guarantee.

Continuity inside the building is an engineering and maintenance question in its own right. A storage tank, booster pump, alternative source or water delivery arrangement may make interruptions less noticeable, but mere possession of equipment is not proof that it works. Is the tank normally filled? Is the pump operational and powered when needed? Who knows how to switch to the alternative source, and has the arrangement actually been tested? No universal number of reserve-tank litres or hours of guaranteed supply follows from the tariff decision or the two repair notices. Any capacity estimate needs the building's real demand and the equipment's condition.

This becomes more consequential in a guest property. A manager may need to explain service problems to occupants while the owner funds a repair or orders replacement water; the rental agreement decides who bears those costs. Garden irrigation and pool refilling also matter if they draw from the same backup supply during a disruption. Emergency tanker water, when used, is a different purchasing arrangement from metered PDAM consumption and should not be inserted into the published consumption blocks. The question of whether water is suitable for drinking is separate again: a utility bill cannot certify water quality at an individual tap.

An address-level investigation need not turn into a technical audit. Identifying the official meter, viewing the tank and pump, understanding how the reserve is refilled, and putting maintenance and emergency-payment responsibilities in writing address most of the decision. Ask how the owner receives Tirta Mangutama's distribution notices for that locality and what happened during known interruptions at the property itself. A claim of “24/7 water” may describe a successful backup arrangement, not uninterrupted network supply. That distinction is particularly important when comparing homes with a communal supply system against properties with their own connections.