Plumbers, scientists, anybody in the know about volumes of water… Please hear my cry. Our local utilities monopoly has just charged our household (average, small family) for the use of 310,000 gallons of water in a 19-day period. We envision a massive lake which would have pooled in our vicinity had there been an actual leak causing this amount of water usage (during an average month for the past 10 months we have used 4,000-6,000 gallons of water).
Are we wrong? Is my estimate of a swimming pool full of water per day accurate? Could this amount of water leak out somewhere and not be noticed, or could a simple leak even cause that amount of water to be used? (our theory is that the water meter was faulty or misread). Anybody with thoughts about this situation feel free to answer!
I have a 30’ diameter swimming pool with an average depth of 5’, it holds somewhere in the neighborhood of 27,000 gallons of water. It is a LOT of water.
310,000 gallons would be about a 50’ diameter lake, 20 feet deep.
I’m no expert on water usage numbers. So I won’t try to opine on 310,000 being normal/possible.
But one time my father got a bill for a huge, abnormally high water usage, way more than we usually used. Eventually the utility investigated, after we portested a lot, and discovered that the line between their main and out meter was broken, and they were literally pumping water into the ground between the street and our yard.
They adjusted the bill down to a normal amount.
If I were you, I’d ask them to send someone out to check the lines.
When I was a kid, I aske my father how much water our swinmming pool (4’ high, 21’ diameter) held. He told me to figure it out.
Seemed mean, but good advice. I figured it to be just over 10,000 gallons.
So 310,000 gallons of water is 31 round above-ground swimming pools’ worth.
310,000 gallons over 19 days equals about 16,000 gallons per day, the equivalent of a railroad tank car. Unless you have unusually good drainage, I can’t imagine this could leak out without you noticing it.
I ask because I once had a utilities meter (I think it was gas) that, instead of presenting the reading as a row of digits, presented it as a row of little clock-like dials (except with only 10 digits), each with its own pointer, but to make matters more confusing, some of them were numbered in a clockwise direction and others anticlockwise - the upshot is that it was very easy to misread, and if you happened to do this with one of the one of the higher-order dials, it introduced a massive discrepancy.
310,000 gallons of water in 19 days would fill a 20’ diameter pool 7’ deep every day. You couldn’t leak this much water without noticing it. Someone probably transposed some digits on your meter, or it’s defective.
Nobody else has mentioned that it would be next to impossible to have that much water come through the pipes.
My bathtub faucet probably puts out about 5 gallons per minute…much more than any other faucet in the house.
At that rate, it would take 43 days to pump out 310,000 gallons of water.
You’d have to be using 11.3 gallons per minute to go through that much in 19 days. I’d see how much water can actually pass through the meter per minute and if it’s less than 11.3 gallons, something’s severely wrong.
Also, if you look at the meter, you’ll see the little dial turning once every 5-6 seconds if that much is going through.
Hey all,
thanks for your replies. The trouble with this situation is that the meter that was read during the 19 days has been replaced with a new one. I’m calling the utility monopoly today to ask where the meter is… I’m sure it was misread or defective, and hopefully it still exists. regardless, it helps to have concrete images of the masses of water which are supposedly involved… I’ll be sure to let them know that a 20’ pool or railroad tank car of water would have to have leaked per day to cause the charges; however, the customer service drone we talked to yesterday didn’t even bat an eye when I opined that a swimming pool full of water would have to have leaked per day. Hopefully, we will talk to someone today who isn’t trained not to think. Again, thank you!
I knew of a case where water from the broken water line leaked into the storm drain, so that the leak went undetected for months.
jason is right. A domestic faucet should run about 5 to 7 gpm.
I’d ask to have the meter read again. I agree with Mangetout, analog meters can be easily misread. Or, the computer program which prints the bills could be wrong.
How to check if a leak is on “your side” of the meter: Turn off all water-using devices, pop the lid on the meter box, and see if the meter is turning. Our city uses Badger meters which have a small red triangle which spins whenever water is going thru the meter.
I had a similar situation about 13 years ago. One month a huge water bill, much bigger than normal. It turned out there was a leak between the water meter and the house, which we had fixed as soon as we realized.
Unfortunately, the local newspaper picked that month to run a story on the biggest wasters of water in town, and we came in third!
Most homes have a 1" pipe supplying the water to the home from the meter which can supply about 13 gallons per minute. You could use up 310,000 gallons in about 17 days if it was running wide open. Where it would go is a whole different matter.
/310,000 gallons = one gallon every 5.295 seconds.
You might have “used” this much if a faucet was left open outside for the entire nineteen days (MAYBE if a toilet was running for the whole time), but you would have at least noticed the drop in pressure.
