Keeping an eye on early leak detection for customers
Imagine opening your monthly water bill to find that your water usage has inexplicably spiked. Suddenly you owe more than 10 times your usual water bill! A little investigation reveals that you had a water leak somewhere on your property that went undetected for days. What a nightmare!
Believe it or not, this scenario is not entirely uncommon. Water lines on your property can become compromised and break over time. And the cost of even a relatively small leak can really add up over time.
For example, just a ¼” leak in a pressurized water line can mean a loss of nearly 15,000 gallons per day? If that is undetected for an entire monthly billing period, it adds up to almost a half-million gallons. Your pocketbook is definitely going to feel that!
With that much money sinking into the mud, early detection is key. And our office staff regularly goes out of their way to give customers an early heads up to these types of problems.
Our staff make a regular practice of checking usage reports on the MVWD system. The district’s state-of-the-art metering equipment can usually detect when a customer’s water usage spikes suddenly, and it shows up on these reports. That allows our staff to alert you of a possible problem before it gets even more expensive.
MVWD staffer Denna Anderson is the one who regularly checks those reports.
“We do have limitations to what we can do,” she said. “We aren’t really staffed to do real-time monitoring of every meter on our system. But as a courtesy, we do go in every few days – as our time allows – and review the usage reports for any dramatic changes in customer usage. That can give you notice of the problem in between billing cycles. And in some cases, that can save you a lot of money. We are just looking to help.”
The one who often makes the call to the customer is MVWD staffer Brenda Chalfant. She said that customers are usually grateful for the notice; though sometimes they are somewhat incredulous.
“A lot of times people just can’t believe that they could be going through, say, 600 gallons an hour and not see a pool forming in their yard,” Chalfant said. “But a lot of times you just don’t see that. The line might be deep enough in the ground that you don’t see the flood until you dig down there.”
Chalfant has a checklist that she completes with the high usage customers she calls. The list includes the possibility of running toilets, leaking hose bibs, outdoor irrigation systems left on, constantly regenerating water softeners and more.
“I go through that list with them and sometimes they realize, ‘Oh yeah, I guess that we have had a toilet running for a while.’” Chalfant said. “They just don’t think that leaks like that could really add up to so much. But they can.”
MVWD General Manager Joe Davis said that he is happy that staff can provide this type of courtesy service for customers.
“Of course, we can’t guarantee that we will catch everything,” he said. “But when we do catch something like this early, it means a lot to our customer. So what our staff does is just a way for us to add some value to our customers. We are glad to do it.”