water bill

Every month, we have a guy from the county come by and check our water meter for our monthly water usuage. Our car wash have a Hydro Management Reclaim system and we recycle our water. Our monthly usuage is betweem 120-170 thousand gallons per month. For some F$#@(NG reason, our monthy bill for this month was at 730 thousand which is almost 4-5x our normal usuage. I spoke to the county representative and their supervisor for over 2 hours about this problem. They kept on saying we are a "car wash business" or there could have been a "leak" as their way of telling me that their reading was correct. If you go by their reading, and the current reading on the water meter, it is correct BUT it is nearly impossible for us to use that amount. We do not have a leak, last month was a rainy month and our volume of cars washed went down, and we check every night to make sure everything is turned off. I used to check the meter once a week but havn't had as much time too since school is starting and other frustrating issues. Anyone else had this kind of a problem??

We had a 2" water pipe that broke about half a year ago because of a major leak that occured in our main water line for about 3 weeks. Even then, our water usuage was no where near the amount that they sent us for last month...

Could one of your employees have left something on by accident for a long period of time without telling you. Sounds like a break of some sort. That's alot of water.
If you know how much it takes to wash a car, then just multiply it out to see where you ought to be. Add gallonage for washdowns/clean-up.

Joe

we use about 10-15 gallons of fresh water per car and we did not do any where near the volume of cars to match 730 thousand gallons... i checked the cameras where the water could be turned on on accident and there arent any places. plus i am around the places where the water could be used such as the water hose, the bathroom, and etc and we did not have any places that was left on for long periods of time.

We record the meter reading every night after everything is shut down and then again in the morning. We made a spread sheet and we put in the ending amount and the # of cars and it automatically figures up gallons per car. Now you do have to account for wash down and prep area plus toilets and so on but it does give you a good idea. We just had a 3" main bust under ground and could not find the leak for quite sometime. It leaked for probally a month before anyone noticed it on the spreadsheet(employees always don't see what you see) and we didn't use near that amount of water. I've also had times where the meter reader didn't read the meter for about a year, he just made up a number close to each months reading and when we got a new meter reader we had a big problem due to the old one losing ground every month.

This may be a silly question, but could another business have tapped into your line. I understand restaurants use more water than car washes. Was the meter read correctly ?

Just a thought.

Joe

the meter was read correctly because i went to check the meter out. The county guy who reads the meter came to our wash twice to make sure the meter was correct because even they were shocked that our meter went up so high. We have a columbian restaurant right beside us. I don't know and don't think our line was tapped from another buisness since our meter for this months has been consistant with our other months, but then again, i am not familiar with how a line can be tapped... i check the meter every day now and it works fine so i have absolutely no idea how our water usage went so high. It's the most water we ever used in over 7 years that we ran a car wash.

If everything is read correctly, then the problem could possibly be with the meter itself. Perhaps the mechanism within the meter is broken and reading exaggerated amounts. Try testing the accuracy of the meter.

A little arithmetic: 584,000 gallons (over what you normally use) for a month would be 13.5 gallons a MINUTE, 24/7. That's no leak. I think a 3/4" line @ 60psi would generate that kind of flow.

On a rainy day turn off main water valve and see what happens to meter. If it moves it's a leak, faulty meter, or someone tapped in (Trust me electrical and water taps are much more frequent then you think)

Next time you are at Starbucks look at their sink, it is kept running all day...I have seen metering devices fail on water softeners that regenerate constantly. That would significantly effect water usage, right?

When a metering device on a softener fails, it will no longer regenerate. That would only reduce the water usage.

What if the timer loses power during regeneration (like a short or something) wont it just get stuck in that cycle and keep regenerating?

That's much more likely to cause a water use problem. In my opinion, anyone doing their due diligence would catch that sooner than seeing it in the water bill.