Water usage
It's a common, and understandable, practice for some utility companies to not check every meter, every month and instead rely on previous usage trends for gas or water or electricity to determine a billable rate. Again, this is an understandable system based on staffing, the number of customers, etc.
However, when it comes to water usage in the midst of a drought, this could be a problem.
Case in point, the fact that I've heard from several folks that their most recent water bills were higher than those for the same time period from the previous year. Ours was higher, saying we used 690 cubic feet of water from Sept. 14 through Oct. 12 compared to 670 last year.
Now, this makes no sense. Even with a new child in the house, both The Wife and I know we've made considerable adjustments to our lifestyle and are positive we reduced our consumption. So, using this handy online guide, I checked our meter this morning.
Since Oct. 13 (over a 28-day period), we've used 520 cubic feet. According to the public utilities folks, over a similar 28-day period from Sept. 14 through Oct. 12 we used 690 cubic feet of water, so something doesn't seem right.
Furthermore, my bill is actually lower if you subtract my current reading from their stated previous reading. According to the bill, I should have been billed for 790 cubic feet of water.
So something doesn't seem to be adding up here. If we know as a community that we've reduced our consumption by 30 percent, it seems rather odd that residents are getting bills for higher rates ... particularly when a check of the meter would confirm that consumption has gone down.
However, when it comes to water usage in the midst of a drought, this could be a problem.
Case in point, the fact that I've heard from several folks that their most recent water bills were higher than those for the same time period from the previous year. Ours was higher, saying we used 690 cubic feet of water from Sept. 14 through Oct. 12 compared to 670 last year.
Now, this makes no sense. Even with a new child in the house, both The Wife and I know we've made considerable adjustments to our lifestyle and are positive we reduced our consumption. So, using this handy online guide, I checked our meter this morning.
Since Oct. 13 (over a 28-day period), we've used 520 cubic feet. According to the public utilities folks, over a similar 28-day period from Sept. 14 through Oct. 12 we used 690 cubic feet of water, so something doesn't seem right.
Furthermore, my bill is actually lower if you subtract my current reading from their stated previous reading. According to the bill, I should have been billed for 790 cubic feet of water.
So something doesn't seem to be adding up here. If we know as a community that we've reduced our consumption by 30 percent, it seems rather odd that residents are getting bills for higher rates ... particularly when a check of the meter would confirm that consumption has gone down.
posted by Jmac at 7:44 AM
4 Comments:
Based on your post I pulled out my latest water bill and our Oct. consumption was down 55% from the previous year. Most of this must be due to the outdoor watering ban. Wow! We were wasting a lot of water and I apologize to all of you.
I was always under the impression that single family water meters are read every month by ACC Pub. Util. staff and they do not estimate from previous bills. I know from my personal reading of the meter (something that I have done on a regular basis for several years now - don't ask why it will show me to be as much as a geek as I try not to be) to be fairly accurate as compared to the bill. I do know (and it has happened to me) that sometimes they enter in wrong numbers when they read the meter - one time they read a 6 as a 9 in the hundreds place so I got hit for an extra 300 cubic feet of water. But they adjusted my bill when I brought that to thier attention.
so is the website we were promised where we could learn to read our own meters, and check out how much we have conserve over last year's winter consumption?
I don't know how to read my meter, and haven't seen any access yet online for me to check the usage over the past year.
aquariusrizing
I don't know about any website but your consumption is listed (in cubic ft) on your bill. You can figure out daily gallon consumption by multiplying the cubic ft figure by 7.5 (there are approx 7.5 gallons in a cubic ft) and dividing by the no. of billing days in the cycle (which is also listed on your bill).
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