Fill a tumbler full of water. Turn off water at street stop valve. Offer tmbler (filled with water) to kitchen tap spout. If level drops, you have a leak. If it does not, you either have a check valve on internal pipework (you could remove this and check again) or there is no leak.
HELP - 3million gallons of water gone through my watermeter!
- Thread starter globalste
- Start date
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demand a new meter now and retain the old meter as evidence.
or stick your own in
or stick your own in
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i have checked the dial turning when everything is shut off.
I timed the meter for 5mins and then from that calculated 1m3 increase on the meter every 12.5hrs. If the meter had been moving at this rate the whole time, it would take something like 18yrs to get to the current figure therefore it has been going through the meter at a rate much higher.
Have shut of our main house stopcock and the meter still moves.
I like the idea about putting water up to the tap in the house with the main isolator at the water meter shut off, although with out taps it will be really difficult to do plus it looks like we need a special tool to shut the valve as I cant move it by hand
Just incase anyone still thinks my reading is wrong, i have 13,100m3 in black followed by 3 red decimal places.
I timed the meter for 5mins and then from that calculated 1m3 increase on the meter every 12.5hrs. If the meter had been moving at this rate the whole time, it would take something like 18yrs to get to the current figure therefore it has been going through the meter at a rate much higher.
Have shut of our main house stopcock and the meter still moves.
I like the idea about putting water up to the tap in the house with the main isolator at the water meter shut off, although with out taps it will be really difficult to do plus it looks like we need a special tool to shut the valve as I cant move it by hand
Just incase anyone still thinks my reading is wrong, i have 13,100m3 in black followed by 3 red decimal places.
whats the betting the whole estate is on your meter?
Good point. Unfortunately there are only 4 houses connected here (its out in the country) and there are 4 water meters. Only two are above 3m2 which makes sense as there is only us and one other house occupied, the other 2 have always remained empty. We have double checked the water meter is ours by the meter reading guy shutting off the meter isolator and seeing if water comes out of our pipework
With the meter reading being 32m2 in June, that would mean around 800 houses being rigged to the meter since then to have the same demand.
Surely if this is a leak, the water board should have noticed a sudden increase in demand, its only a tiny village with a population of <1200 and <300 houses!!
With the meter reading being 32m2 in June, that would mean around 800 houses being rigged to the meter since then to have the same demand.
Surely if this is a leak, the water board should have noticed a sudden increase in demand, its only a tiny village with a population of <1200 and <300 houses!!
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And how would one do that?
Demand new meter, they come to change it, you say to the guys changing it - "can I keep the old one for evidence?" they say words to the effect of "urine not on"!
we've not had a bill yet, just a notice to say that we have to get it fixed in 14 days.
We've written to the waterboard saying that we did not know we have a leak etc and that in line with their code of practice we should not be charged for the quantity of water.
Have our insurance company coming around on Thursday to discuss it too.
We've written to the waterboard saying that we did not know we have a leak etc and that in line with their code of practice we should not be charged for the quantity of water.
Have our insurance company coming around on Thursday to discuss it too.
Easy one to sort.
Many utilities are under extreme pressure to reduce their leakage rates by Ofwat. A leak of this size should be of major importance to them.
Thames Water and many others are using a bit of kit that attaches to the meter in order to remotely observe any leakages.
See this
http://www.qonnectis.com, click technology then Leakfrog.
My advice is to contact Ofwat and let them know what the state of affairs are and pressure the water utility to contact Qonnectis and get some Frogs asap.
Hope that helps?
Many utilities are under extreme pressure to reduce their leakage rates by Ofwat. A leak of this size should be of major importance to them.
Thames Water and many others are using a bit of kit that attaches to the meter in order to remotely observe any leakages.
See this
http://www.qonnectis.com, click technology then Leakfrog.
My advice is to contact Ofwat and let them know what the state of affairs are and pressure the water utility to contact Qonnectis and get some Frogs asap.
Hope that helps?
That would depend on the ground.
If everything is turned off and the meter is still going round then there's a leak, digging down to the pipe and it should become obvious, as once you have a hole you can usually see fresh water running in from the direction of the leak.
Once you have exposed the pipe, nearish to the boundary you can cut the pipe and fit a new stopvalve, check the meter has stopped, then carry on digging to find the leak or re-new the pipe.
If the meter is still turning you know its between where you have fitted the valve and the meter.
If you turn the new valve off at night someone will soon complain about no water if it's a shared supply.
You should be able to hear a leak anyway, stick the blunt end of a screwdriver in the ear and the sharp end on the stopcock (turned off)
i like your idea doitall
I just need to figure out how to shut down the mains stopcock during the day as well incase it is leaking.
The thing is, according to my calcs the water has been leaking at over 33,000 gallons per day. This is the volume of water it takes to fill your local 25m swimming pool, and its per day!
So why havent we had any pressure/volume flowrate drop to the house? Surely the mains water pipe cannot heamourrhage this volume of water and yet supply a regular volume flowrate to the house? All the showers, taps etc have performed perfectly normal...
I know that my father in laws swimming pool is ~8000 gallons and that takes 2 days to fill up and we have lost on average over 4x the volume of water in half the time every day for potentially 90days!
I just need to figure out how to shut down the mains stopcock during the day as well incase it is leaking.
The thing is, according to my calcs the water has been leaking at over 33,000 gallons per day. This is the volume of water it takes to fill your local 25m swimming pool, and its per day!
So why havent we had any pressure/volume flowrate drop to the house? Surely the mains water pipe cannot heamourrhage this volume of water and yet supply a regular volume flowrate to the house? All the showers, taps etc have performed perfectly normal...
I know that my father in laws swimming pool is ~8000 gallons and that takes 2 days to fill up and we have lost on average over 4x the volume of water in half the time every day for potentially 90days!
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