I have hardly been home in the last two months but my water usage has gone up by 30%. Is there a chance that the water meter is not working properly? I live in San Diego, CA and I would be even willing to pay for them to change the meter. The house is 30 years old.

Water meters measure water and/or air. Has the untility company done any work in your area? Tell them you contest the bill and want them to come out and test the cailbration of your meter with you present

Hi all...

I'd like to chime in on this as well... ;) I'm thinking it may be time to check and see if the toilet(s) in the house may be running constantly and perhaps that is what drove your bill up so high.

To test this, take about 10-15 drops of red or blue food coloring and drip it into your toilet tank(s). Be sure NOT to get any food coloring into the toilet bowl or to drip any down the overflow tube. Now, wait 1 hour and see if any of the coloring shows up in the toilet BOWl. If so, you may have found the culprit that raised your bill. Here, you would need to, at a minimum, change the flapper assembly in the toilet tank. Worst case, you may need to change out the entire flush assembly valve.

If no coloring shows up after 1 hour, wait 4 hours and then check again. It may be a slow leak and a slow leak over days and days can still increase a water bill ridiculously!

Anyway, let us know what you think on this... OK?

MARK

And another "chime"
To check for a hidden leak go out to the water meter, look for the little hand below the read out. With all your fixtures shut off you should not see the little hand moving. The faster it moves the bigger the leak. Before I did anything I would check all your toilets, a small leak running 24/7 can run your water bill sky high. I don't know what kind of piping you have in your house or if your built on a slab. We check differently for houses built on slabs. If you have a older home, 1970/75, you may have galvainzed iron pipe leading to the house from your meter. If it's leaking don't even bother to dig it up. Run a new service line out of sch.#40 PVC. More questions? I'm as close as a click. Good luck and thank you for rating my reply. TOM