My wife and I left for a vacation last Tuesday morning, driving for 7 hours to a nice VRBO rental. We’re all settled in and having a great time. On Wednesday afternoon I checked my email and noticed a message that my water company back at home had sent me on Tuesday night. It was probably the worst message one can get from your water company in such a situation:
You may have a leak. You used 2,370 gallons of water in the last 9 hours.
Holy fucking shit. I tried to imagine what 2,370 gallons of water pouring through my house would look like and was not at all happy with the mental image. My wife and I discussed the possibilities. We were both sure that we had not left any faucet running. Could a toilet be running? Could a pipe have burst? The first case would be a minor annoyance (a somewhat higher water bill this month); the second case would be a major disaster potentially costing us tens of thousands of dollars. Would a running toilet really use that much water? Should we drive home immediately?
I contacted a neighbor who thankfully was home and went over to my house and closed the main water shut-off for my house. So whatever had happened at least wouldn’t get worse. After much agonizing, we decided to cross our fingers and continue with our vacation. I told myself that if there was indeed water damage, the bulk of the damage had already been done, and letting it sit for a few more days wouldn’t make enough difference to ruin our vacation (although honestly I was not very convincing to myself).
We drove back home four days later, and with great trepidation entered the house. No sign of any water damage, thank Neptune. I turned the house shut-off back on, and immediately heard a toilet running. Apparently my wife had used that toilet and flushed it just before leaving the house when we departed, and therefore didn’t notice that it never stopped running.
I may make a habit of turning off the house shut-off before leaving on any extended trip from now on. I had never before considered the damage that a water leak could do when left unattended for several days.
I’ve told the story before of the day we were leaving at the crack of 5:00 for vacation. We were about to depart when I decided that shutting off the main water valve would be a good idea. I ran back into the house, down to the basement, and turned the valve closed. Then: drip, drip, drip. The freaking valve decided to spring a leak because I had the nerve to disturb it. And there were six people in an idling, loaded minivan waiting for me to come start our vacation.
It’s been on my mind since to replace that gate valve with a more reliable ball valve, but that’s a big project that I have been procrastinating on.
I do have four wifi water leak sensors placed at strategic points around the house; any water detected will instantly sound an alarm on my phone. I recommend these for peace of mind.
You didn’t ask for advice, but hopefully a heads-up is OK.
Our plumber informed us our city levies very harsh fines on any citizen caught using the main valve. He explained that some non-zero percentage of the citizens manage to break the thing while attempting to figure out which way it turns. Replacing it is expensive for the city so they’ve forbidden its use by the “untrained” (only city water dept. or licensed plumbers).
I don’t know if this is common, or my town is an outlier. But the price for adding a secondary valve on our side of the meter/valve was about the same as the fine. And ours is easier to use and requires no tools.
I’ll add one more piece of advice. When you turn off the water to the house, also turn off the water heater. If for some reason there is a leak, there is a small but real possibility that the hot water tank may be emptied. You don’t want the electric heating elements (or gas burner, if a gas heater) turning on in an empty tank.
Not sure how this works with the newer heat pump water heaters, but I imagine they won’t fare well trying to heat an empty tank as well.
Thanks for the advice! I’ve not heard of such a regulation before. However the valve I’m talking about is a ball valve on the side of the house that I had a plumber put in about 20 years ago. It’s not the city’s valve that is next to the water meter.
At a friends house the city had a water pressure spike to almost 300psi. Blew the fitting off the master toilet, which then ran for a week before discovery. Basically totaled to house–full gut and re-do on the town’s insurance. I also have water bugs from SimpliSafe in various locations.
That is actually fairly easy to have happen, as it has to me at several residences of mine over the decades: either the float has been set at the wrong angle to shut off the water, the feeder valve itself has a leak, and/or the flappy thing refuses to drop down like it should even when the float reaches the top.
I’m glad nothing was wrong, but these numbers seem really extreme for a running toilet. That’s almost 4.5 gallons/min, which is like twice as much as a typical maximum flow rate for a kitchen faucet. I’m just not understanding how that much water could be used by a running toilet.
I’m answering my own question here. After some googling, it appears that a running toilet with a fully open fill valve could go through that type of volume. That would NOT be a typical small, silent running toilet that most people are probably familiar with. That would essentially be a continuous flush cycle.
This is an old toilet. I’m pretty sure it still has the same valve hardware that it had when I bought the house 30 years ago. When I opened the tank, the flapper had indeed not closed correctly, so the tank was not retaining any water, and the flush cycle was just running continously until the house supply was shut off.
I was surprised at the numbers too though. Based on the 2370 gallons number, during the approximately 32 hours that the toilet was running, over 8000 gallons passed through that toilet. That’s enough to fill more than 150 fifty-five-gallon drums. If it had really been a leak, it would have been enough to fill my house almost a foot deep.
I had a similar occurrence several months ago. In my case, I got a letter from the utility company that I was using an unusual amount of water. It just so happened that day I had cleaned the toilet and noticed that the water in the bowl was constantly moving so I knew what the problem was. I had called a plumber and it was fixed the next day. He replaced the floater and the flap thing. Fortunately, it did not result in too much overage on the bill. I was certainly expecting much worse. I did appreciate that they contacted me but I’m not sure why it wasn’t by email. I get the bill notification that way. Knowing sooner would certainly be better if it was a leak.
I called a family member (yes, at 5 am-ish) and he came to the house to check it out and we departed. He let us know that, by the time he got there, the drips had stopped. He returned to have a look-see every couple of days while we were gone, and updated me regularly.
It was then that I learned to not mess with an old spigot-type valve that hasn’t been touched in many years unless you’re prepared for a leak.
During our first winter in the New Orleans 'burbs, we went over to Texas to spend a week with my sister and her husband. Got back to find the pipes had frozen while we were gone.
I’m glad everything turned out well for you. The “toilet running” reminded me of the one in my downstairs “powder room” (which I assume refers to women powdering their faces and not to gunpowder). It would more and more frequently continue to leak water from the tank into the bowl, resulting in the occasional sigh of refilling the tank. I fixed the problem by replacing the flapper, though fortunately it had not occurred to me how big the problem could have been if the flapper replacement hadn’t worked.
As for turning off the main water supply when on vacation, it may be a wise thing to do but it’s just not something I usually bother with. I don’t even bother to turn off the water from the washing machine when not in use, which is conveniently on the second floor of the house adjacent to the bedrooms and in a position to do tremendous damage if there’s a leak. It has armoured hoses which I trust not to burst, and I trust the washing machine valve to do its job. Other opinions may differ.
Neighbor across the street was away many winters ago and we noticed water running out their front door. This was before cellphones and we had no idea how to contact them. They happened to return while we were trying to decide what to do, but of course too late. A pipe upstairs had frozen and burst.
I’ve been happy with X-Sense water sensors in our basement. We also have their heat sensor in our garage (smoke detectors aren’t a great idea in garages as exhaust tends to set them off).
