Our water meter shows water usage we can not account for. No faucets dripping, no toilets running. We had a new meter installed 2 months ago, but still showusage we can not account for. Any ideas?

any of you neighbors been digging?

There has been a foot of snow on the ground for 3 months. No one is digging anything but snow berms.

So the meter is showing usage 24 hrs a day , 7 days a week ? It stops when you turn the curb valve off ? What happens when you turn the main valve off in the house ? The water is either leaking outside or inside, just start narrowing it down from there. An air test may or may not help pin point where it's going.

You have a buried water line carrying water from your water meter to your house, then it enters thru your foundation wall and runs under your main floor. That water pipe could be leaking anywhere. Have you had any frozen pipes that may have ruptured under the house, including the outside faucets/hose bibbs?

Turn off all the water in the house, go out to the water meter and take a look at it. Most water meters have a flow indicator on the dial, often it is a little triangle or wheel, it spins when any water is going thru the meter. If it is spinning when you have everything in your house turned off then water is going somewhere, it may be leaking underground or under your house. If you call the city water dept they will come out to see if the leak is on their line or on yours but since the meter was just replaced I doubt if there is a leak on the city side of things or they would have discovered it. I think your repair responsibility starts somewhere near the house-side of the water meter.





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Consider, performing daily meter readings. Manually, read the top number and measure the flow rate, every 24 hours. Also turn of the main valve OFF in your house. Read the meter before you do it and wait 10 minutes with the water OFF and measure again.

If you have water flow, with the water turned OFF, you have a leak issue.

Best Wishes

Also check garden hoses to make sure.

I have one of those one to four splitter connections attached to my hose bib. Each of those have their own on/off levers. I had two 50' hoses attached one runs to the back and one runs to the front.

Instead of turning on and off the hose bib, someone left it open and relied on the nozzles being closed on the end of the 50' hoses.

Then someone I hired to come do some stucco work in the front, didn't like the nozzle attached to the front hose, detached it. Went to the bib to turn water off. Then went to the back hose to remove that nozzle he liked better. Now the back hose is left unterminated. He then connected the back nozzle to the front hose, turned the bib back on to mix his stucco. When he turned the bib back on water started to run to the front hose but also out the back hose. He finished his work a few hours later and left. Water running via the back hose down the back deck, into the back alley, all day, all night, no one noticed until I heard water in the pipes the next morning. That was over $500 of additional water bill.

My first thought is to send the stucco guy a bill, but then maybe you have some responsibility in notifying him of special circumstances regarding your piping arrangement. When a worker comes on to your property he is not familiar with all of the idiosyncrasies of your home. This could be a lesson for everyone.