Mysterious "leak" - going to go to battle with the water department....

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cgilley

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Need some practical thoughts and experience here. I live north of Atlanta in an area where the county water department has gone full NAZI mode. Once you go past a certain amount of usage, the per gallon charges go up exponentially. They call this tiered usage. Now, I will be honest here - I know there must be some good people working for the county, but I know the commissioners are corrupt at worst and lackadaisical at best. The permit and inspection departments are completely braindead, and just about everyone else is a family member of someone who gave them a job, etc.

So a few years ago, the county started switching to smart meters. These have little antennas in them that when the meter trucks drive by they query your usage. In my house, I know what the average usage is per day. I run about $40/month. Imagine my surprise and panic when this month's bill came in at $250. That's a lot of water. Being an engineer, I thought the worst. Checked toilets - no leaks ( a few months ago I rebuilt all 5 of them). Checked laundry connections, no leaks. Dove into the crawlspace fully expecting to find it flooded - dry. Verified no soggy spots in the yard. Hmmm.

Pulling up the water departments website, they now helpfully show your water usage. I can go back years. All of the usage is as expected except for 3 days in early march where day 1, the usage starts to spike - 10 times the average 5000 gallons), day 2 is over 50 times (10000 plus gallons) , day 3 is trending down (5300 gallons) day 4 is 4100 gallons and then after that we're suddenly back to normal at less than 300 gallons per day.

This seems to be some sort of glitch in the system. Has anyone here seen something like this? Did I miss something in my property check? I could see a mainline breaking and leaking underground, but this would not explain the usage returning to normal. We're talking 20k gallons of water - that's a large swimming pool.

Would it make sense to have a plumber come out and sanity check things? The water consumption has gone back to normal, so I'm not sure I'd be wasting their time and my money.
 
Those spikes are concerning. If things are back to normal and you can attest to the fact or prove that you didn’t do anything extraordinary on those three days, I’d ask them to adjust the bill for those three days.
 
BlueSkyHigh said:
Those spikes are concerning. If things are back to normal and you can attest to the fact or prove that you didn’t do anything extraordinary on those three days, I’d ask them to adjust the bill for those three days.
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I agree. Very bizarre. I should have posted the usage chart. This is over the past 2 months. The year plot is even more striking :)

1713189978852.png
 
Someone in my city was just charged $5000 for one month of water. They showed the city council all their bills for the last 36 months, and all averaged $60 a month. It still fell on deaf ears when he pleaded his case to the Mayor and city council members.

I suppose installing the daily monitor onto your incoming water pipes could show it is their fault and not yours, but those monitors cost $700-$800 plus installation.

I would demand that your city water inspect their remote meter reading and determine if they had a glitch or not.
 
Water theft is a thing.

Was the OP or OP's family home on those days? If not, did a neighbor put in a new pool in that time frame? If yes, does their water bill show 20k gallons of usage?
That might have been 5 or so fully pumped up water trucks (4000 gallons each) or somebody filling a pool. Seems like about the right time to fill a pool through a garden hose. Hard to believe anybody in the house would not have noticed those events if they were home though.

Does the OP have a pool? If so be sure there isn't some bizarre failure mode where it drains the pool surreptitiously (into a pipe, not into the street) while topping it off continuously.

What this was not was a leak, because that much water dumped in that short a time would have left a big hole in the ground somewhere, or at least a huge muddy spot. Also leaks of that magnitude do not just stop by themselves. Hmm. A broken soft water system might be able to do this, they all have a drain into a sewer line for when the salt is used to wash calcium off the beads, and they move the water under fully automatic control. A stuck sprinkler zone might do it too, but there would have been a really obvious flood.

Software and hardware glitches are also a thing. Assuming the OP was home then this was probably one or the other. No way for you to know which, or even where - the error might have been in the meter, in the reader, or in the processing of the data. If it comes to legal fisticuffs demand access to the raw read data for the entire city for the year ending in the month after this took place. That would let you or your lawyer troll through and look for similar events. (If the data is in a reasonable format a computer could do this sort of analysis in seconds. For 100K accounts it is only 36.5M values for a year. ) It would also probably be a PITA for the city to produce and they might settle rather than have to produce it.
 
OP here - we typically average close to 300 gallons per day. You can see this from the image earlier. In answer to your rhetorical but sensible questions: 1) I have a hot tub. I know when I drain and refill. That happened in December (sadly it's been a while since I've been in it, but that's another issue). 2) Neighbor on one side is pushing 90, no pool; the other are two school teachers - one of whom I watched grow up - not a chance there. 3) that much water should have left a swamp. I never water my grass, there is no irrigation system, no water system - just a basic house.

As for glitches - leaning that way. Calling them today.
 
I would consider submitting a FOIA request for all meters and all days as someone suggested. I lived in an east ATL bedroom many y community many years ago and watched builder / owner tie his sprinkler system in Front of the meter . Just another corrupt county.....
 
A search for "Atlanta huge water bill" turns up a fair number of hits. A few are from actual leaks (main line to house) that apparently were not visible on the surface. Not sure how that would happen. Maybe the house is built on gravel with 12" of dirt over that? Anyway, it is possible to show that such a leak is not present (rule out a bad meter). For instance, run a hose from a neighbor with a flow gauge on it (Orbit sells one for around $15), to a hose bib (need a male to male garden hose adapter, $5?), turn off water at curb and everywhere in house except to the hose bib where the water comes in. That won't reveal a big leak in the OP's house since clearly that isn't going on now. It might still be worth trying it though to demonstrate that there is not still a small leak. If only to rule out the "the leakage is present but varies with time" argument from the water company.

I would also make the argument that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" - if the water company cannot make a reasonable explanation for where all that water went they should not be able to bill for it. Right now they are sort of claiming that their elephant is in your closet.

Can a running toilet use that much water? We have occasionally had the chain knot up so that the flap stays up, and the toilet runs continuously. Hard to ignore the resulting noise though. I can hear that sound from anywhere in our house, and my hearing sucks. 10k gallons in 24 hours is 6.94 gpm, our toilets max out at something like 2 gpm, but maybe some other toilet models fill faster and have a higher rate? Measure this on your toilets so that you have data to show that they could not have been the source of the leak.
 
So, a follow up to my original post :) The water department is still digging into their data - I'm not hopeful, but maybe they will come up with a nugget or two.

Fast forward to today as in 5/13. After my little wtf, I turned on alerts for any usage over 500 gallons. Got an alert for yesterday 1700 gallons were used. It was the day my daughter and hopefully son in law were home for the weekend.

Pretty sure I found the f'ing leak :). Both are notoriously known for taking stupid long showers. We shall see if it repeats. Seriously, how the f' can you stay in the shower that long?

I expect it from teens. not from adults. The word has been spoken.
 
cgilley said:
So, a follow up to my original post :) The water department is still digging into their data - I'm not hopeful, but maybe they will come up with a nugget or two.

Fast forward to today as in 5/13. After my little wtf, I turned on alerts for any usage over 500 gallons. Got an alert for yesterday 1700 gallons were used. It was the day my daughter and hopefully son in law were home for the weekend.

Pretty sure I found the f'ing leak :). Both are notoriously known for taking stupid long showers. We shall see if it repeats. Seriously, how the f' can you stay in the shower that long?

I expect it from teens. not from adults. The word has been spoken.
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What type water heater do you have ?
 
pasadena_commut said:
A search for "Atlanta huge water bill" turns up a fair number of hits. A few are from actual leaks (main line to house) that apparently were not visible on the surface. Not sure how that would happen. Maybe the house is built on gravel with 12" of dirt over that? Anyway, it is possible to show that such a leak is not present (rule out a bad meter). For instance, run a hose from a neighbor with a flow gauge on it (Orbit sells one for around $15), to a hose bib (need a male to male garden hose adapter, $5?), turn off water at curb and everywhere in house except to the hose bib where the water comes in. That won't reveal a big leak in the OP's house since clearly that isn't going on now. It might still be worth trying it though to demonstrate that there is not still a small leak. If only to rule out the "the leakage is present but varies with time" argument from the water company.

I would also make the argument that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" - if the water company cannot make a reasonable explanation for where all that water went they should not be able to bill for it. Right now they are sort of claiming that their elephant is in your closet.

Can a running toilet use that much water? We have occasionally had the chain knot up so that the flap stays up, and the toilet runs continuously. Hard to ignore the resulting noise though. I can hear that sound from anywhere in our house, and my hearing sucks. 10k gallons in 24 hours is 6.94 gpm, our toilets max out at something like 2 gpm, but maybe some other toilet models fill faster and have a higher rate? Measure this on your toilets so that you have data to show that they could not have been the source of the leak.
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The water company doesn’t have to explain where the water went. That’s one thing I can guarantee you.
 
cgilley said:
Fast forward to today as in 5/13. After my little wtf, I turned on alerts for any usage over 500 gallons. Got an alert for yesterday 1700 gallons were used. It was the day my daughter and hopefully son in law were home for the weekend.

Pretty sure I found the f'ing leak :). Both are notoriously known for taking stupid long showers. We shall see if it repeats. Seriously, how the f' can you stay in the shower that long?
Click to expand...
Maximum shower flow is supposed to be 2.5 gpm. It is often quite a bit less than that. Let's allow 200 gallons for other uses, and assume the worst case shower flow. That would be 1500/2.5 = 600 minutes = 10 hours. Seems a little long even for several exceedingly luxurious showers.

I think what Twowaxhack was suggesting is that if this was a conventional water heater it might not have been able to keep up, and a 9 hour cold water shower would be no fun. If there was a tankless water heater it should have been able to keep up - but there would be a correspondingly large amount of gas usage.

It could be something they did that actually caused that much water to flow, and it might be productive to get a minute by minute from them while they still remember, or it could be the meter or billing software just happened to glitch again when they were there.
 
Twowaxhack said:
What type water heater do you have ?
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i have two - one is a Bradford and the other is a ? (don't know off the top of my head). Both easily handle the hot water needs of the house, well, normal hot water needs. As for the flow rate, it never occurred to me to measure, but I will this week. I prefer reasonable water flow - f the government mandates. One of the first things I do is to remove the restrictor in the shower head that I use. I normally do not use the bathroom in question, and it's been so long since I've done anything back there I'll have to check.

As for the water dept explaining, I agree. But the web gets curious. Within the last few years, the department has transitioned to electronic meters. The two people in question have been here at least this long. The huge spike was well after they entered the household. I can tell this because when they are in the house, I usually see a $10/month increase in the water bill. Also, the huge spike occurred when the department had communication issues with the meter.

Looking at the data reported for this past Sunday, I see 400+ gallons each hour from 5pm to midnight. I know for sure there was little water usage at that time - the only appliance running was a high efficiency Bosch dishwasher catching up on the Mother's Day dishes. Note the last 4 readings... they are identical. Going back to around noon - I see the showers hit, and the usage is in line for a nice shower, but not 1600 gallons worth... I'll get Monday's numbers later today, and we'll see what they say.

image_2024-05-14_031852008.png
 
The electronic reporting meters in my area have had “ glitches “. The online reporting hasn’t been accurate as to when the water was actually used.

Unless they take cold showers or are part amphibian it’s hard to believe they used that much water in the shower.
 
Aggie83 said:
Ask them to install a different meter perhaps?

And at least you are not this person!
https://www.bigcountryhomepage.com/...to-discover-nearly-million-dollar-water-bill/
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If they come out and verify the meter is accurate then they’ll most likely charge him a fee to replace the meter but I agree it’s an option.

Another option is to install your own meter a few feet in front of the water companies meter and verify your meter is accurate. Then compare the daily, weekly, monthly readings. With your second meter you have at least some proof to you or the water co. about the amount of water being used rather than what you “ think “ is going through your meter.
 
Our local meters work like this…..

The meter sends out a radio signal to a local receiver that’s in the neighborhood mounted on a pole. That receiver then transmits the info to the water company computer.

Ok, so sometimes it doesn’t receive the message or there’s a delay in sending the message. The main computer doesn’t compensate for the lag in reporting. So sometimes it’ll show a large water usage on the wrong day.

So it’s basically lagging and the info isn’t as it appears although the water use is happening, it’s just not happening when the system is reporting it.

Now can there be other glitches that these clowns aren’t revealing ? Hahaha of course. That’s why I recommend getting that second meter so you have a way to check those crooks.
 
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