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Published Monday, November 02, 2009 in Local

Check those water leaks; they can be costly

By Sarah Fay Campbell

The Times-Herald

A water leak, running toilet or water hose left on can use an incredible amount of water in a very short time, and can lead to sky-high water bills.

When that happens to a customer, the Coweta County Water and Sewerage Authority can adjust the bill, only charging the user the production cost of the water.

Cowetan Julie Smith has paid her reduced bill of $275.32, but is quite certain she never had a leak. And if she did have a leak, it must have magically fixed itself after 10 days.

According to the computer readouts from her water meter, Smith's household usually used a little more than 100 gallons a day; on some days, it would go over 200 gallons.

But on Aug. 22, that jumped to 898 gallons. The next day, 1,427. Then 1,917. On Aug. 25, her meter registered 2,184 gallons. The next day, that jumped to 3,409.

Then things really began to flow. On Aug. 27, the meter recorded 8,350 gallons. On Aug. 28, it was 11,394 gallons -- nearly eight gallons per minute for 24 hours.

The meter recorded 12,857 gallons on Aug. 29, and 13,434 gallons on Aug. 31. That's a whopping 9.3 gallons per minute, every minute, for 24 hours. In comparison, a low-flow shower head can put out around 2.5 gallons per minute. An older shower head typically uses about four gallons per minute. A high-flow kitchen sink faucet can put out between four and seven gallons per minute.

On Sept. 1, only 8,234 gallons were recorded by Smith's meter.

And then, on Sept. 2, things went back to normal: 106 gallons.

Smith didn't know a thing about the apparent "leak" until Sept. 21, when she was informed by the Water and Sewerage Authority. She ended up with a water bill of $630.

Smith said she has spent a month going back and forth with the authority. "Explain to me how, all of a sudden, I have a leak, and run 64,000 gallons through my house," Smith said. Her septic tank has a maximum capacity of 6,000 gallons. Smith said she never saw any standing water in her yard, and has looked all over trying to find any possible leak.

"A leak just doesn't appear and disappear by itself. It doesn't make sense," Smith said.

"They say 'We can't explain it, but our graph says that water went through your meter,'" Smith said.

Smith's home has one of the authority's newer radio frequency meters. These electronic meters store flow data, and the authority was able to give Smith a printout of each day's usage, and a graph.

"I don't know if it was the meter. I'm not even saying it was the meter," Smith said. Water authority crews have pulled the meter out of the ground and tested it. "I wasn't thinking it was necessarily the meter itself, I was thinking it was a glitch.' Smith said.

Smith said she was told that, if she wrote a letter saying that she had had a leak, and had fixed it, they would reduce her bill. "What I was most offended by was they told me I was going to have to lie," Smith said.

On Oct. 4, out of an abundance of caution, Smith replaced a rubber toilet flapper.

"My brother is a general contractor. We walked this house, checked every sink, every thing," Smith said. "If it was an in-ground leak... my front yard would have been saturated."

This was before September's heavy rains saturated everything.

"If I have a problem, I can't find it. A general contractor can't find it. My other brother is a plumber, and he can't find it," Smith said.

"I don't have a problem fixing something if I have a problem," Smith said. "They can't show me where there is one, and their attitude says 'our computer says you have one.'"

"We're not trying to get out of paying anything that we owe, that wasn't it at all," Smith said.

"Either she had an open hose bib or faucet or commode leaking," said Ellis Cadenhead, general manager of the water and sewerage authority.

Or, it could have been a water hose left running for days, Cadenhead said.

"Once it leaves that meter, it's just like leaving a light on. It's on until somebody turns it off," he said.

Tracy Thigpen, of the authority's meter testing and leak detection division, said she both pulled the information off the data logger, and pulled the meter out of the ground and tested it. And when she tested it, "the low flow was reading too low," Thigpen said. "She was not overcharged... the water went through the meter."

When new meters are installed, customers will often notice their water bills going up. That's not because there is something wrong with the new meter. It's because the old meter was reading too low.

"Meters have a tendency to slow down, not speed up," Cadenhead said.

The water went through the meter, and someone has to pay for the production of that water, Cadenhead said.

"We are trying to be fair to the customer and do what is right."

Customers who are concerned about high water bills or leaks can do their own water audit. The authority has brochures and information about it.

Basically, to check for leaks, turn off all faucets in the home, and go look at the meter, which is located in a meter box. If the meter shows water is flowing, when all faucets are turned off and toilets are full, there is a leak.

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