Here is what my water meter looks like, except mine says 1" instead of 5/8" and it's much dirtier:
http://www.mupb.com/images/watermeter.jpg
So on the lower dial, in one hour with no water usage, it moved from 6.6 to 6.8, which I read as 0.2 gallons (I mistakenly said 0.1 gal in my original post). But even a leak of 0.2 gal/hr is only 150 gal in a month. I guess the red triangle rotates if you have a leak, I didn't notice that before.
I called the utility but they couldn't give me any kind of comparison to my neighborhood except to say that "normal" monthly usage is 5k gal per person plus whatever you use on the lawn. Is running the sprinklers for 1 minute per zone per week using 10,000 gallons a month?
I will turn the sprinklers off and start watching the meter every day.
Advice was not asked on whether or not to water. The question on the table isI live in Texas as well, but I have not watered my lawn since October. Why would you need to water your lawn until next month? Turn off your sprinkler system. Do not just put it on 1 minute per zone. When the system is off, the lowest possible time is zero.
I'm betting on the sprinkler system. Back when I lived in the MegaCity I blew a diaphragm in one of the valves. That turned out to be a watery mess. I learned to check the valves once a week to see if they were leaking.How on earth do I explain the rest of the usage?
I watched the meter for an hour last night when no one was in the house and it moved 0.1 gallons in an hour with no water usage. So that leak is only 0.1*24*30 = 72 gallons per month. Neither of us takes baths or uses the tubs (shower only).
Ask your neighbor to disconnect his hose from your outside faucet ...
+1I know some places don't always read every meter every month. When this happens, they tend to "estimate" based on past usage habits. It doesn't seem like this would cause such a sudden spike if usage hasn't been unusually high lately, but if they underestimate when they don't read the meter, it could lead to a larger adjustment later when they do read it. Obviously I don't know if this is the case but it is one potential source for "sticker shock" on utility bills.
This is a possibility. My sister recently had a sewer problem and when they traced the problem the plumber was digging in the middle of the neighbor's yard. Her outgoing sewer line was tied into the neighbbor's line.
Someone clearly took some kind of short cut when the homes were built as my sister had to pay to have her own connection made to city sewer.
I guess the same thing could happen with the water source.
Wouldn't it be considerably easier to look up the specs of your softener and see what what it tells you about how much water is used when it regens? Mine says 42 gals...I should actually be able to get a pretty good idea how much water my water softener is using.
Wouldn't it be considerably easier to look up the specs of your softener and see what what it tells you about how much water is used when it regens? Mine says 42 gals...
If you had an underground leak in the system then you'd expect the little red triangle to be moving.The little red triangle on our meter isn't rotating at a perceptible speed, so I don't think there's a chronic leak.
I now suspect we have had an underground leak in the system for quite some time. Sheesh.