Separate tenants share utilities

[Tawnie Vinitnantharat]

Hello BP,

My spouse and I bought a single family home with an ADU last year. We lived in the ADU and rented out the main home. So we were able to have a pretty great relationship with our tenants and really be on top of everything. However, are amazing tenants are now moving to Hawaii (and we can't compete with that), and at the same time we bought a home for ourselves. So, we are planning on renting out the home and the ADU separately.

However, these units do have shared utilities. So, we are planning on keeping the utilities in our name, and charging the tenants a flat monthly rate for utilities. The other issue is that these units share a furnace. So I have tried to read up on laws in the Seattle, WA area and it seems that I am allowed to have a central heating system and just put in the lease that the temperature can't be set to lower than 68 degrees. Does anyone have any experience with this, or any other suggestions?