OP is either still giving the tech an ear full, or has in fact discovered he does have a 39,000 gallon leak in/under his home.

If he has a leak hopefully he is not on a slab. I have seen bad meters but if it is manually done it could just be a bad read. Once we changed all our meters to "radio read" the meter readers drove through the town, collected the data and would have to go back to certain houses where it didn't read or the consumption was way more than it should have been.

There can easily be a leak under the slab and you could lose that much water without realizing it, depending on the soil type.

My sister had this happen and they cut a 4x4' hole in the slab, fixed the leak, and repoured the floor and the bill was $1600.

They can also tunnel under the builder, at least here in the South. I just had an entire 4 unit apartment building tunneled under and all of the cast iron drain plumbing replaced for $12,000. They shoot water at the soil to create a tunnel and have a big vacuum that sucks up the mud and puts it in a dumpster.

The water here used to be unmetered. When meters were installed, mistakes were made. The car wash and a small residential business had the meters switched. It took two years to solve that issue, as the city insisted that the reading on the meter was correct. The city at that time was using some sort of device that measured the water usage electronically. It was the human meter reader that found the problem.

Okay, tech came and discovered there were no leaks in our house. What a shock. She said something must have happened in the house. I then explained to her that a 39,000 gallon incident would have been noticed. She said it was definitely an issue in the house as the meter was working correctly as the amount came back to normal for the last 30 days. So the bottom line, according to her, is that it is my word against the water company's word. She said to call and file a dispute, which I did. Water company said they will send a tech to examine my meter. The whole thing is strange to say the least.

did they re read the meter. I got a call from the water department with something like this. After a sleepless night they discovered they read the meter wrong. Now they have wireless readers - hopefully they are accurate.

Hopefully it will be a misread meter for you.

quote:

Okay, tech came and discovered there were no leaks in our house. What a shock. She said something must have happened in the house. I then explained to her that a 39,000 gallon incident would have been noticed. She said it was definitely an issue in the house as the meter was working correctly as the amount came back to normal for the last 30 days. So the bottom line, according to her, is that it is my word against the water company's word. She said to call and file a dispute, which I did. Water company said they will send a tech to examine my meter. The whole thing is strange to say the least.

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How many gallons do you typically use? Records of past usage are helpful with these sorts of things. I would imagine the dispute will be resolved in your favor once you contact a higher level supervisor.

Typically our utility would look at your past 5 years of usage. It's all on record and easy to look up. If you had no pool or sprinklers, no obvious leak, in most cases we gave you the benefit of the doubt and would charge your normal billing.

I once did an inspection of a new connection. I was only there to make sure our water line was tapped correctly. Next the townships plumbing inspector would inspect the line running into the house. After his inspection our guys would come back and install the water meter. My involvement as I said stopped when the main was tapped correctly. Apparently, the plumber connected to the house without a meter and without calling our utility to let us know to set up an account and collect the connection fee of $2,100 at the time. Two years later customer service calls me and asks if I can see the homeowner who complained of rusty water. It is not uncommon to see this appear at the last few homes on a dead end line. We flush the lines twice a year in the middle of the night. When I called customer service from the house, I reported the home did not have a meter. The homeowner had 2 free years of water. Investigating further, the head of customer service only charge for the last billing cycle when it was discovered there was no meter. The homeowner slipped up when she told me the supervisor of customer service was a good friend of theirs. The only reason the head of customer service wasn't fired IMO was she was connected to someone in town hall. She was reassigned to a Clerk position with less pay.

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Originally posted by PASig:
At least you didn't have the situation with my wife's parents; they got a quarterly water bill for like $2,000 instead of the regular $200

They go to the borough and ask what the hell is going on and get the answer "Oh sorry we've been undercharging you for the past 16 years".

I think they ended up getting a lawyer because it was due to a faulty meter and not any fault of theirs.

Regular $200 water bill??? Great googly moogly, how man people live in the house?
There is 5 of us. Washing machine runs at least once a day, dishwasher same, 3 shower, 2 baths daily, even in the craziest months when I am watering the yard and flower beds daily we’ve never had a bill over $60. Most months are about $28.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:

Regular $200 water bill??? Great googly moogly, how man people live in the house?

He said that's a quarterly bill, not monthly.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:

Regular $200 water bill??? Great googly moogly, how man people live in the house?

He said that's a quarterly bill, not monthly.

Yes, quarterly and also includes sewer.

That’s pretty low compared to some locations around here with ludicrous water/sewer rates.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:

Regular $200 water bill??? Great googly moogly, how man people live in the house?

He said that's a quarterly bill, not monthly.

Yes, quarterly and also includes sewer.

That’s pretty low compared to some locations around here with ludicrous water/sewer rates.

Not sure how I missed that quarterly.

We had a homeowner/customer one time with a high consumption and they swore all was ok in the home. I checked meter and the sensitivity needle was turning, had H/O cut his water off in home and meter showed usage still. At this time it was no longer the counties problem, due to the leak was between the meter and the house. The H/O understood his situation and went on to tell me he also had an very high electric bill, guess what his leak next to his home was finding its way to his sump pump (he said its been running a lot and had a wet spot next to house) After I checked the sump discharged was also next to his home so result they were just recycling the water from the leak. I explained the purpose of drain tile or at least extend piping away(down grade from his home).

quote:

He said that's a quarterly bill, not monthly.

Still nuts. I pay $42 a quarter for water, family size 3 (me, wife and 16y/o daughter).

My monthly bill from the city Public Works department is usually around $55 to $60.

That includes metered potable water and sewer, and unlimited re-cycled water for lawn irrigation system, as well as twice weekly trash pickup and weekly re-cycling pickup, all on one bill.

My quarterly water/sewer bill is usually $190-$200. 4 of us most of the time, weekends my son comes home. 6 bedroom, 4 bath. All outside water is from our well. High rates in my town compared to the rest of the county.

When I worked at the city, we had a contractor hot-tap the pressurized sewer line and tie it into a new home once. Lol.

Did they ever re-read your meter?

quote:

Originally posted by whododat:
Okay, tech came and discovered there were no leaks in our house. What a shock. She said something must have happened in the house. I then explained to her that a 39,000 gallon incident would have been noticed. She said it was definitely an issue in the house as the meter was working correctly as the amount came back to normal for the last 30 days. So the bottom line, according to her, is that it is my word against the water company's word. She said to call and file a dispute, which I did. Water company said they will send a tech to examine my meter. The whole thing is strange to say the least.

So it had been ok.

Then one month usage is 39,000 gallons.

Then next month, back to normal.

????

Still no call back from the water company.
Yes, the tech said basically it will be our word against theirs. There are no leaks, we do not have a pool and we do not water out lawn. I also do not stand next to my toilet and flush it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The tech checked my meter and said there were no leaks in the house or anything causing the meter/water to constantly run. Very strange to say the least but until the water company dispute department calls back and sends someone to actually inspect the meter, we will have to wait. I am going to call again.