[Greenbuilding] [BULK] Re: measuring water use

[Lawrence Lile]

Or - turn off all of the water using appliances in your house, ideally
close the main shutoff valve, walk up to the meter, and watch it,
preferably over a 24 hour period.  If it moves, you have a leak.  Fix it
soon - leaks tend to seep for a long time then kawhammo!  A $300 water
bill! 

Reuben could use this trick to calibrate his tweaked toilet, if he had
an accomplice flush ten times or something while he's watching the
meter.  On the other hand, this would WASTE water he's trying to
conserve...  

Lawrence Lile, PE, LEED AP
Project Solutions Engineering

-----Original Message-----
From: greenbuilding-bounces at listserv.repp.org
[mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of Reuben
Deumling
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 3:41 PM
To: Sacie Lambertson
Cc: greenbuilding at listserv.repp.org
Subject: [BULK] Re: [Greenbuilding] measuring water use
Importance: Low

Sacie,
try reading your meter every day for a week. I guarantee you'll learn
something from doing this. That said, if your meter is 1/2 mile from
your
house, you could try installing a flow meter closer to the
house--somewhere
accessible, like in the basement or...? Then you can compare the two
readings. If your meters read in different units, 7.48 gal/cf. Good
luck.

ISTEC sells very high quality flow meters that aren't cheap, but I've
bought
a bunch from them and have been very pleased: <www.istec-corp.com>
*http://tinyurl.com/2uywz4 *for the link to the meters I've used

alternately you can go to your local hardware store. they may have some
for
closer to $50 or $60 I'd guess.

Reuben Deumling

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 1:13 PM, Sacie Lambertson <
sacie.lambertson at gmail.com> wrote:

> The current talk about flushing toilets combined with our recent
> water bill reminds me to ask all for practical suggestions for
> measuring overall water use.  Our bill was way high and I can't
> believe two people can use that much water, unless of course there's
> a leak somewhere  along our 1/2 mile line into our house.    Thanks,
>  Sacie
>
>
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