This one was for $65.11. Crap.
The wastewater treatment bill is based on water consumption, so I hastily pulled up the municipal public utilities bill (which covers not only water usage, but also "service availability," sewer service*, solid waste collection, and even stormwater removal) that had arrived the day before. Typically the portion of the bill for actual water usage runs around $13 for 400 cubic feet, or 3,000 gallons, of water for about two months (roughly 62 days, ± 1).
This bill's water usage portion was $56.08, for 1700 cubic feet, or nearly 14,000 gallons of water! Double crap.
Now granted, this particular billing period was for 70 days instead of 62, but 13% more time isn't going to produce 325% higher usage. Since I hadn't entertained a platoon of houseguests over the holidays, filled a swimming pool, or opened a neighborhood carwash in my driveway, something was very, very wrong. I called customer service.
The very nice gentleman who took my call pulled up my billing history, and readily agreed that something was fishy. After a few questions (e.g., Any houseguests? No. Anyone taking over-long showers? No), he observed that they had changed out the water meter five days before the end of the billing period (well, that explained why the usage was split into two meter readings; I had been wondering about that), so he wanted to investigate the possibility that the final "pull" reading had been recorded incorrectly. He said he would call me back later that day. Given my usual experience with customer service reps, I expected that probably meant, oh, next Tuesday, but in fact he did call back at the end of the day.
When he did, unfortunately, it was to report that the reading had proved to be accurate. Moreover, he noted that the usage on the new meter did indicate that I used 300 cubic feet of water in the 5 days after the meter was changed, that is, three-quarters as much as my typical usage in two months.
In short, I must have a leak somewhere. A pretty severe leak, at that.
I was, quite frankly, baffled. My house has no basement or even a crawl space where a leak could be hiding, there's no plumbing in the garage, and any leak of such magnitude from any of my fixtures ought to be painfully obvious, as in several inches of water on the kitchen or bathroom floor. I did allow as how the toilet tank has been auto-refilling periodically for months now – I even bought a new flapper and just hadn't gotten around to installing it yet – but we're talking about once every few hours (not every few minutes), and the frequency hasn't increased since my previous bill. So I didn't see how it could be that.
He said you'd be surprised just how much water a leaky toilet can use, and asked me to shut off the water to the toilet and monitor the water level in the tank for several hours, to see if that dodgy flapper was in fact the culprit. He also asked me to check all my fixtures, under the sinks, washing machine, water heater, and so on. If I found a leak and fixed it (or had it fixed), I would get an adjustment on my bill. OK, I could do that, though I still found it unlikely that I would find anything. Then he said he would request that someone come out and check the meter on Thursday to see if there was any noticeable flow.
At that point, I remembered and told him about an incident that might be relevant. Back in December, the cable company had had the underground utility lines marked along the front edge of several house lots, with mine in the middle. I think it was between Christmas and New Year's that a work crew came around and dug a number of huge holes along that line, which seemed to be for the purpose of repairing or upgrading the cable along that stretch. Some of those holes were right next to the water meter boxes at my house and my next-door neighbor's. They finally finished the work well after dark, filled in the holes, replaced the turf, threw some straw over the surface, and left.
The next morning, my next-door neighbor found he had no running water in the house. The cable guys had apparently cut his water line, and his front yard was soggy. Public Utilities couldn't get anyone out there till Monday. My neighbor got a plumber to come out and make a repair. I thanked my lucky stars they hadn't hacked into my water line, too, and forgot about it.
Except now I wondered if maybe they had hacked into my water line, only not drastically enough to be obvious. The public utilities customer service rep agreed that it was a possibility (though he thought it should have been noticed when they changed out the meter) and that he would have it checked, and said goodbye.
By now it was about 5:30. I decided to do a quick check of the kitchen plumbing before supper. Nope, no leaks. A glance at the patio door reminded me of the outside hose bib; better make sure that wasn't dripping. I stepped outside and off the deck.
The ground squelched. To my horror, the nozzle of the hose connected to that tap was lying beside the deck, not just dripping, but happily burbling out water at a pretty good clip. The whole area was waterlogged. I squelched to the faucet and shut it off.
I had found my "leak."
To be continued...
* Yes, we get billed separately, by two different entities, for the existence of the sewer pipes themselves and for the treatment of what goes through them. The line for "service availability" means I get billed for the potential of being able to run a tap or flush a toilet, even if I don't. For that matter, I get billed for stormwater removal even if it doesn't rain.
