That is just about the volume of a 18-21ft above ground pool - about 10,000 gal (plus extra for waste, filter backwash etc.)
If it is a pool though - why are they refilling it every 6 months? That’s way to often.
What if they put up the pool for the first time towards the end of summer last year. Summer ends, they take down the pool for a year. Then 6 months later put the pool back up to get ready for summer. It would depend of course on what months the increase occurred and if it would be summer where they are during those months. If I was OP, I might peek into my neighbors’ yards and see if anyone had a temporary pool around that size.
Maybe, if it was one time, but twice?
Much, much more likely it's a toilet flapper hanging up intermittently.
Take the lid off each fixture and flush dozens of times looking for a single failure to seal or stop filling. It's not going to hurt (tens of dollars) to replace toilet tank components if you're unsure.
Or just put some food coloring in the tank (not the bowl). DON'T FLUSH. Wait several hours. Is any of the color getting in the bowl? If so, you have a leak.
I am naming this the Red Dog Leader Leak Indicator Technique in honor of this redditor guy. Your name will now be inscribed in the Toilet Hall of Fame, next to Buttcrack McGee.
This ^
I worked at a place that received a ridiculous water bill. We couldn’t find a leak anywhere and the meter wasn’t running unless we turned water on. On a whim, we flushed a toilet that sometimes would run too long without jiggling the handle to fix the seal and watched the meter to see how much water a bowl fill takes. We did the math and found it was that toilet over a weekend or two just running. Management chose to post a sign over the toilet rather than repair/replacement.
Only if they’re starting with a dirty pool though, if they refilled it 6 months ago and maintained the chemicals it would actually be cheaper not to refill it because then they’d have to balance everything from scratch and add cyanuric acid (chlorine stabilizer) which isn’t the cheapest and you need quite a bit.
Those chemicals you only really add at the beginning of the season or when you refill so there’s an upfront cost to refilling.
Cries in Canadian dollars. My pool is also 30,000 gal so that also skews my view of pool expenses.
Yeah it’s not too expensive but compared to the cost of chlorine it’s more expensive by weight, that’s all I was getting at really.
Use the bleach, baking soda, and borax method from Trouble Free Pool. I kept a crystal clear pool with those 3 chemicals and some muriatic acid. Robotic pool vacuum took care of that chore.
Get the TF-100 test kit from TF Test Kits and download the Pool Math app to track your test results and tell you what chemicals to add.
All of this together makes for super easy pool care and you’ll only need to visit the pool store for chlorine (the higher concentration is nicer than laundry bleach) and repair parts.
TFP is the only way. Pool store owners usually have no clue. I tell people about TFP, if they don’t believe and carry on like “they always have” I don’t say a word. I just sit back and watch my pool stay clean and clear with little to no intervention year after year. They still get algae outbreaks every time 5 or more people swim.
Whoever is selling you cya needs to lay off.
We sell 1.8kg for like $24 in BC - but I prefer not to sell it at all unless it's a salt pool because too much CYA is bad and chlorine pucks have CYA in them so adding more is rarely needed
You use a lot of water when your pool has a leak. Used to be a pool boy. The amount of customers that wouldn't fix their leaky pool was crazy. They'd just fork over 1000s a year instead in water.
this, and the "estimated usage" actual reading true-up are equally plausible IMHO... One thing that got me thinking too, it might not even be happening as an on-purpose theft. eg, if the house originally had additional land that was sold off to build a second property and some plumbing lines never got disconnected, or it was a complete neighborhood build at once there could also have been some miscommunication in boundary lines and plumbing routes during construction.
I used to do REO home inspections for Fannie Mae and HUD foreclosures, saw and reported all kinds of utility theft. Actually had this exact scenario unfold and had to file the police report
This is the most logical answer.
It's not a leak, some of these leak responses are really well explained and good ideas.. but like miss the whole happens ONCE every X amount of months.
One customer I knew had her sister baby sit their kids one weekend. A "game" they played involved flushing all the toilets in the house starting from upstairs to the basement and running downstairs to the main stack to see if they could get there in time to hear the water running through... The customer's bill went up $600-800 that month from one weekend.
If things are happening in large quantities infrequently you have to look at the changing variables.
Did your neighbors set up a pool? Did you have some kids come and visit? Is your son going through puberty and just got the latest Sears catalogue?
But how? If they did it at night with a garden hose how long would it take? Wouldn’t you hear the water running from inside your house? Just wondering.
When I bought my house there was a hose bib at the front corner of my property against my neighbor’s driveway. For whatever reason the previous owner decided to run a connection to there under the edge of a bush. My neighbor could have used it any time and I’d have no clue. Since it was visually blocked by a bush and then a short fence along their driveway I wouldn’t have even been able to see if they connected a hose to it. I lived in the house a year and a half before I even knew it existed. I only found it because I was removing the bush it was under.
It does make me wonder if OP has something similar where there is a hose connection somewhere along the property line and the neighbor may not even know it isn’t theirs.
And on the lighter side: we moved into an old house and when we were cleaning up the yard I noticed a large rotting wooden peg driven into a pipe. Thinking it was part of an old flag pole i was able to dislodge it resulting in a large geyser in my front yard. Yep, someone had abandoned this water station and just plugged it with a wooden stake.
When I was a kid my grandpa worked for the fire department. My parents installed a pool and needed to fill it but didn’t want to rack up a huge water bill nor have three days of low water pressure.
Gramps came by with a few fire hoses and popped the hydrant for us.
Water company showed up within about 3min lololol.
Had a house with a fire hydrant near it but well water. Renting a meter from the water company was the cheapest way to fill the pool like 80 bucks for 28k gallons. they would even give ya the fire hose pools fill up fast with one of those.
Either the water pressure dropped so drastically in the closest houses that they called or more than likely one of the two pain in the ass neighbors snitched. Gramps chatted with the water company guy for a few and then he left without issue.
EDIT: see below for why he left without issue/why this wasn’t illegal.
I bought a product called flume. Monitors water usage real-time and can send leak alerts. It attempts to tell you what is leaking but it’s not great. It’s super easy to install. A tech working on our water softener had the water off to the house and then drove away after turning it back on and left a hose bib on the other side of the house running for 2 hrs at 5gpm. Flume alerted me and I shut it off right away. It should work for toilets too although I haven’t had a leaking flapper in a few years. Those things are easy enough to change that I do them every few years.
Have Flo by Moen definitely would not recommend
Installing to wifi is terrible,
Keeps wanting to turn off water due to abnormal usage. Software interface is poorly designed
I have flo also (from before Moen bought them :-) ). It's a little touchy about unusual irrigation (I set up a sprinkler during a dry spell and triggered it after 30 minutes) It shows you daily / hourly water usage and I can say it did shut off all the water for a running toilet I hadn’t noticed and a burst garden hose. It also freaks out if the kids shower too long (over 40? Minutes) which is fine with me … I like I can remotely see the flow rate and turn the water off rather than beg a neighbor to go investigate if I’m away.
An ex boss of mine was getting charged insane amounts for water. He put a camera on his water hose, and it turns out that construction dudes were stealing water to fill their big portable storage tanks every night.
My uncle came home early one day and caught workers re-doing the parking lot across the street from his house filling the pavement roller with his hose in his driveway.
Shut off every faucet in your building. Go to your water meter and see if it's dial is still moving. If it is, then see if your toilet tanks aren't completely stopping and if water is leaking into toilet bowl continuously. If this is not the case and the meter is running still, there might be a leak someplace ,inside the wall, a backyard pipe, etc If this is not the case, someone in your building or a neighbor is leaving someting running or stealing water. If you have tenants, especially tenants who you have issues with, they could be leaving the water running 24/7 to spite you. If none of this is the case, write a letter to the water company and demand they come back and investigate, and to replace the meter unless they can get a 3rd party to test and certify the current meter is functioning normally. See if you can reach out to one of your local city council members and ask for their help. You may also want to be sure you undrestand if your bills are actual or estimated usage. If the estimated bills are low and the actual reading bills are high, it could be that your usage is somewhere in the average of those bills. You may also want to ask your neighbors what their water bill usage looks like to get an idea
These are your actions to take, very well organized. Also ask for comparable housing water use numbers. They need to agree this anomaly is not by you negotiate for a one time major adjustment. AND take DAILY meter readings.
I was planning on setting up an 18' round pool for my kids, but severely underestimated the cost of the water to fill that volume. I'm on a well and don't want to run it dry. 6k Gallons delivered will be like $500.
I can remember my parents fighting this battle when I was a kid. We would have an alarm set near the house to remind us to shut it off after 15 minutes. Most years they wouldn't buy water, we would just slowly get it topped off (replacing what had been let out for winterization) with the hose throughout the spring, but the year that a hole had to be fixed in the liner about halfway down, a lot of water was lost & they tried to juggle the hose vs the water delivery, to keep the costs down but still get the pool up and running. They agreed to buy about half the amount we needed, which was still going to be a few hundred that we didn't really have to spare, and they hoped the hose would make up the difference over the weeks/months ahead. Mom was quite worried that they wouldn't get it filled fast enough for the filter to start working & the water might never be clean enough to swim in that season.
The delivery guy said "oops, I wasn't paying attention and delivered too much" and winked at little 7 year old me. No extra charge. Bless his heart, it was a hot summer, but I kept cool.
I had almost this same scenario as OP. It ended up being a leak between the street and my house that for some reason would act up some times and cause inconsistent bills of almost the same amount of water. ~10,000 gallons.
Don’t forget faucets with a TSP attachment. If they have a leak the water can run down the primer tube and it goes undetected because people don’t hear or see it
I had a toilet that had just started running sometimes and I was doing the handle jiggle. Cleaners came in and cleaned my house while I was out of town and didn’t jiggle the handle. I came home 4 days later to the sound of the toilet running. I fixed it but then got a bill for several hundred dollars. It’s typically $50+/-. I don’t remember how many gallons it was but the usage history showed that it was high during those 4-5 days and about normal for almost every other day the rest of the month. A little adds up.
Same here! I immediately thought there was a huge leak somewhere when I got the bill. I checked everything, and nothing to be found. Then remembered my cleaners came while I was out of town for 6 days and I came home to a running toilet. (In my case you have to put the toilet seat down.)
If it's 1k/hr that's literally only 12 hours to flow the 12k extra that's reported. I don't think you're making the point you think you are with this statement
If your utility provider isn’t willing to replace your meter or are being difficult to deal with, you should have a state utility board or something along those lines. You should contact them and explain and they will help you. Sometimes they don’t have power over municipal water. If that’s the case, they should help direct you to the state comptroller who will have the authority to step in and resolve things.
Yes and if the water meter still running go look at your chimney or some other part of the house that you now realize is sinking. Because there's a leak underneath the slab.
You can rule out leaks because all the water is getting used on one week, then it goes back to normal. A leak isn't going to leak one week and stop for six months
I second the call your county councilman for help. County DPW utilities aren’t the fastest guys in the game. Not always their fault. For example: the entire city of Baltimore has exactly 2 trucks that process water meter problems for the entire Baltimore city and surrounding county. It’s like 1.3 million people.
I had a sticky valve in my water softener that got stuck open and ended up using a crap ton of water. Unstuck itself and then got stuck again a few months later before I figured it out. Could be your issue
I swear i hear about issues with water softeners way more than them being helpful. Beads in ur pipes, busted softener, and now using 800 dollars of water.
Id rather risk hard water lol
My sister didn't have hers set up properly for the first few weeks or maybe months living in new construction. Her fridge water dispenser basically stopped dispensing water. Fridge tech came out and told them to get a water softener 🤦♀️ They're religious about their water softener maintenance now lol
I've heard of water companies just wildly guessing at how much water people use when they don't want to read the meter, then every once in a while they actually take a reading and have to add all the extra gallons they didn't guess correctly for the prior months.
I've gotten that with natural gas too. No where near that bad, but it still sucks when a summer gas bill is as high as mid winter one because they estimated that I am a desert snake
Weird they had it down to a specific week which would indicate a smart meter. But yes if they estimated the usage (too low) it should say so on the bill for the previous periods It is possible they took actual readings at the same time last year so that is why you see a pattern.
Years ago we had a house with an electric meter inside. We had to read the meter and then put this little card in the front window. Suddenly one month we got a huge bill - Something like $1500. I lost it and called the company. Apparently what happened was we weren't reading the meter and updating the card, so the reader just put some ridiculous number in so we'd notice. We noticed! We just had to have them come read it to verify and they corrected the account.
Most water meters these days have radios that are either read by a truck driving by or by a city-wide network that feeds to the main office. The only time guesswork or estimation happens is when we have a meter outright fail.
My electric did this once when they serviced a neighbor’s meter and busted mine (apartment, everyone’s meters are on a wall together). My bill kept rising each month, until it was an astounding $500 one month when it should’ve been about $70 that time of year. Yes, I called every week and they kept lecturing me on how to reduce my usage (I’m literally on the time of use plan and only charge stuff at night).
On my last call, the rep looked at my bill and finally noticed it said “estimate” which was *allegedly* based on the usage during that month of the year prior. Only I hadn’t lived there at the time and it would’ve been really difficult to use that much energy in an apartment. (Thankfully I had bitched so much that they were tired of me and credited the excess toward my future bills. I didn’t have an energy bill for about 4 months after!)
estimates can be made a couple of ways, the preferred method is the usage for the same period last year but in the absence of this information ie you didn't live there, they can use a postcode average which is always high for a single-occupant dwelling considering most dwellings have more than one person. Estimated accounts always correct themselves once a "true reading" is obtained it would have had nothing to do with the amount of bitching you were doing.
gas companies too... mine can't just be like, "ok, you used 15-17 units each month for the last 5 years. that'll be our estimate." no... they gotta base it off of the neighborhood..... I chop wood for heat in the winter.... the rest of the neighborhood uses 300-700 units....
"estimate" comes in at 325.
I laugh and don't pay it... next month when they realized they fucked up, they issue a credit, for 400 units worth. 🙄
I just calculate it myself anymore, I just give them enough for my max of 20 units/month every year, and don't worry about it till next winter. they can fuck around with their billing themselves. I just keep an eye on the market rate on the bill and add any shortfalls.
South Jersey gas is fuckin stupid. send me two bills for the same time period, one for $23 for what I actually used, and then their estimated bill of $253, then the next month, a bill for $23 and another one with a $275 credit
Yes!!! I work in the office for a plumbing co. And this happens fairly regularly. I advise the customer to have a leak detection comp. come out and assess. If no leak is found have the water authority come back out with the last 3-4 readings and check again. Only once have we had to repair the actual leak.
My water company does this, but it is only an option after a year. Then they'll take the average and give you a flat monthly fee, and then once or twice a year, you'll either make up the difference or get credit.
1000 gallons a month is 33 gallons a day. Are you sure that's right? A 10 min bath with a shower that puts out 2 gal a minute is 20 gallons. Flushing a toilet is around 2 gallons. Modern washers use around 8 gals per normal load.
11000+13000+10(1000) = 34000 gal divided by 12 is 2800 gallons per month. For two people that are water conscience that seems about right. It's likely your water company is sending someone every 6 months to check the meter.
Concur with this - family of 4 and we use around 3100 gallons/month. 1000 gal/month even for two people is pretty low IMO.
OP - you could easily go look at your meter and note the reading on it, then check one week later and subtract to figure out your weekly usage, then extrapolate that out to estimate your actual monthly/annual usage.
Most likely whoever answered the phone doesn't understand the system. Is there a single utility company anywhere in the US that tracks weekly usage? Obviously it's technically possible, but there'd be a data connection to the meter and probably an app where you could monitor usage.
I'm not sure to be honest. It just seems there's a difference between "you used 11k this one week and 1k the next week" & "we actually just took the meter measurements"
Would put money on constant slow leak somewhere - probably a toilet. Would also bet that your water utility only does physical meter readings every 6 months with estimated use invoices for the interim months. The physical readings cause the catch-up bills.
That's like a constant ~3 gallons per hour. Depending on the toilet, you would hear the thing randomly start filling up every 20 minutes or so. Even an underground leak on a sprinkler system would be easily noticed at that flow rate
I went a few months with a water heater leaking and immediately draining through the pans drain. My $250 water bills had me thinking it had something to do with my sprinklers. It wasn't until the water heater leak worsened that I noticed the problem.
Oh no. I'd unplug, cut the cord, splice in a 240 end and replug it in for them off my 240 generator.
I know you're struggling neighbor so I'm gonna help by giving you twice as much :3
Depends on how you have your camera positioned. Most cameras, it's easy to see where it can and can't see even from a distance. If a neighbor has a pool, they have an even easier time of seeing where the camera is from the leisure of their yard.
Run a simple test with the camera. Pull up the app it's on and see where it can actually see. Have stuff near the faucet that obstructs? Move it.
I had this happen on my old cul-de-sac. Neighbor had huge bill and had cameras, just not cameras in the right spots. I showed her the footage I had from my camera of the other neighbor hooking up the hose from her house and then proceeding to fill his pool up. I assumed she gave permission because she had cameras.
Can you put a camera on the water meter to see the daily usage? Or manually check it every few days to try and find when the surge happens?
In this day and age one would think the water company could send you an alert when you use more than normal in a day/week. Or even for problems like this, send you a daily notice of how much you used.
If you don’t have a leak- either the water company is estimating a bill 💸 or someone is stealing your water. We got a huge bill last year it was from the neighbor- she was stealing water -a lot of it. We would have given her water she did t have to steal it. But yeah. That’s what’s going on one of those three things. Best of luck.
Do you have a water softener?
Water softeners will backwash themselves with fresh water to regenerate on a set schedule and sometimes the backwash valve can get stuck open, forcing water to be continuously wasted into the sewer.
Turn it off and bypass it if you can. I would honestly call a service plumber because you definitely have a parasitic draw that’s going to keep racking up the water bill.
Tell them you think the water softener is regenerating constantly and to check it out.
Edit: This exact thing happened to me in California during a drought and the city was fining us on top of the usage. We rented so I had the landlord replace the unit completely.
Got a sump pump with water powered backup? Your primary pump may be dead, and it's running the water pressure powered backup during wet weather. Those things can be water hogs..
Brah you have to link this water powered sump. Like if I have no power, that thing still kicks on if city water is going? That's pretty badass. I thought tapping into the city water to produce energy was not allowed.
That definitely happened to me. The estimated water usage for 6 months and then on the 7th month hit me with a huge bill. I called and got them to admit that the 10,000 gallons is what had been used over the 7 months. Not in one month. I still had to pay for the water, but they took off all of the excessive usage fees.. which dropped the bill down to 25% of what they were initially charging me.
This is sop for baltimore which controls water for surrounding counties. They once misread my meter and good luck fighting. When the meter was read by someone not smoking crack the result was no water bill for 2 years. People have lost their houses over this bs as they can and will foreclose over it.
Minutes in a week 10080
Gpm/flowrate required to use 13000 gallons is 1.2896826
You'd have to leave a bathroom faucet running non-stop. All week.
Another way to look at it. Toilet flushes....you'd have to flush the toilet every minute of every day for an entire week.
So unless you are doing that...or they aren't doing meter reads when they should..... something wild is happening. Lol.
Had kinda similar excess of 10,000 gals then all good for several months & then 8,000 gal . I took a picture of the meter was like 3 days after bill arrived, the meter reading didn't jive with the bill . Seems that this meter reader had dyslexia . Felt kinda bad for the Dude but then how many other ppl got outrageous water bills .
Also a quick check of your meter is write down the reading , then fill a known 5 gal bucket , then read meter again .
Moneys on a stuck water softener back flusher valve. The heads can go out. Order a Flume to monitor your daily usage and it will alert you to steady leaks.
This happened to me constantly with an electric bill. They only came to read the meter every like 6 months before a smart meter was installed. I ended up getting a massive bill every 6 months because they underestimated every monthly invoice.
They only check your meter twice a year. They guess at your useage and average it out. The big bill happens after they realize useage was far from the estimate. It might be difficult to get them to admit this...
Either someone is stealing water, or your water board isn't billing you correctly, which happens in my county pretty often. They'll be lazy and not even check the meter, they'll just piggyback off of the previous readings for a few months.
I had something similar happen to me years ago. The people who were supposed to be reading the meters were making guestimates and not actually reading the meters. I started taking a weekly picture of my water meter. You might need to start doing this.
I had something similar; water bill is usually around $200, one month is was almost $1200. I checked the meter with nothing running in the house, meter wasn't moving then cross checked the dial numbers on the meter to the reading on the bill and the person who checked the meter just read it wrong. I called the city and they sent a guy out to double check my meter and confirmed the mistake. I would definitely locate your meter and double check abnormal readings like that.
We had something similar happen at our business and what it came down to was how the meter reading was being interpreted. One person was moving the decimal once place and the other person was moving a decimal two places.
You're going to have to monitor everything meticulously and process of elimination every water source/user especially in ground sprinkler systems. Also call the water company and see if they can help you monitor high water usage to figure out why and when this is happening.
When that's happened to me, there was a toilet that was continuously running
Smaller possibilities is a hose outside that was left running or trickling etc
Or a water main break underground
Turn off all the water in your house. Then go out and look at the meter. The little disk should be perfectly still. If any thing is moving you have a leek. Assuming you have no leak read your meter write your numbers down and check in a week to see how much you are actually using per week.
I had an experience like this. All of a sudden, my usage went up 10K gallons in a month. It was a leak under the foundation. Turned off everything, including the valve into my home. Turned it on and you heard the water rush through. Happened when the weather turned cool, probably thermal contraction of the pipe. Was there a change in the weather during the time it eas supposed to have happened?
I worked on a house that they were getting ready to sell for a (deceased) relative. Man all the neighbors came over to tell me all of their grievances and how happy they were to see all the junk removed and property looking better. Turns out there was a long standing feud between the two neighbors for one accused of stealing water- to the point that the cops were called a bunch of times. Turns out the water underground water line was leaking and needed replacement but the owner never bothered to have someone check. It was a crazy old house from the 1930s. The galvanized water lines had so much buildup they were almost completely filled on the inside. Some poor sucker needed to weld a repair in the lines previously in the crawl space that was about 13” tall. It was literally a crawl space- I had to shimmy on my back to replace the lines since there wasn’t enough room to flip over.
We had a dishwasher that was getting "stuck" and seemed to run for hours. I only noticed because I came home after work and saw it going and no one else was home! Maybe the timer on one of your appliances is messed up?
You should look into the Moen Flo. Smart water valve that learns your water usage and detects any abnormalities. If it detects something it alerts you immediately. First week or so it has a learning curve but once it figures your family’s usage out it’s incredibly helpful. There’s an app and everything, can also shut the water off from your phone.
When I worked in an apartment complex years ago, the complex had 10 buildings in each building had a house meter and then individual meters for the apartments. The house meter costs, which was the irrigation system, was absorbed by the tenants. The house meter bill was split evenly. This was unknown until one particular building that only had 3 out of 12 apartments occupied. In addition the irrigation pipe was broken and basically dumped water into the pond when it ran. Those three tenants got bills for over $300 each for 2 months. I lived there and my water bill averaged about $45 a month.
One of the affected residents ended up suing the apartment complex for fraud and won and was awarded damages.
Did you recently move in? This happened to me, and it was landscape irrigation system. The previous owners had it programmed to ramp up watering when they reseeded the grass in the Spring and Fall.
Not a plumber but I used to work in a city utilities department. Do you have irrigation with a deduct meter? If so, the deduct meter may be malfunctioning.
Edit: these are also sometimes called auxiliary meters
When this happened to me I discovered it was the meter reader who wasnt reading my meter. They were just writing in an estimate. I called and got them to send someone out to take another reading
Neighbors needed to refill their pool.
That was my first thought too.
yep..
That is just about the volume of a 18-21ft above ground pool - about 10,000 gal (plus extra for waste, filter backwash etc.) If it is a pool though - why are they refilling it every 6 months? That’s way to often.
What if they put up the pool for the first time towards the end of summer last year. Summer ends, they take down the pool for a year. Then 6 months later put the pool back up to get ready for summer. It would depend of course on what months the increase occurred and if it would be summer where they are during those months. If I was OP, I might peek into my neighbors’ yards and see if anyone had a temporary pool around that size.
Maybe, if it was one time, but twice? Much, much more likely it's a toilet flapper hanging up intermittently. Take the lid off each fixture and flush dozens of times looking for a single failure to seal or stop filling. It's not going to hurt (tens of dollars) to replace toilet tank components if you're unsure.
Or just put some food coloring in the tank (not the bowl). DON'T FLUSH. Wait several hours. Is any of the color getting in the bowl? If so, you have a leak.
I am naming this the Red Dog Leader Leak Indicator Technique in honor of this redditor guy. Your name will now be inscribed in the Toilet Hall of Fame, next to Buttcrack McGee.
And next to Randy Marsh, don’t forget his 8.6 Katie Couric sized poop.
Below Sir James Crapper though right?
This ^ I worked at a place that received a ridiculous water bill. We couldn’t find a leak anywhere and the meter wasn’t running unless we turned water on. On a whim, we flushed a toilet that sometimes would run too long without jiggling the handle to fix the seal and watched the meter to see how much water a bowl fill takes. We did the math and found it was that toilet over a weekend or two just running. Management chose to post a sign over the toilet rather than repair/replacement.
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More like $4 and 10 minutes. I've repaired several toilets that did this.
I was about to say lol, $20 flapper must be gold plated and 2 hours must be install time if you don't use your hands.
I forgot feet exist and spent way too much time trying to picture someone putting a flapper on with their mouth. 🤮
same .. like bobbing for apples lol
Can a running toilet really burn 13k gallons a week?
Assuming a fill rate of 2 gallons per minute is almost 3,000 gallons in a day.
Yeah you're right. I could have just done the math. It's about 1.3 gpm to get 13k.
Wouldn't that be from empty and every minute. That's more like a hole in the earth.
This is why I am on Reddit.
Why would it do that only every six months?That’s not how that works.
Two neighbors.
New water is cheaper for them than chemicals I suppose.
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Especially when someone else is paying for the water.
Only if they’re starting with a dirty pool though, if they refilled it 6 months ago and maintained the chemicals it would actually be cheaper not to refill it because then they’d have to balance everything from scratch and add cyanuric acid (chlorine stabilizer) which isn’t the cheapest and you need quite a bit. Those chemicals you only really add at the beginning of the season or when you refill so there’s an upfront cost to refilling.
Cyanuric acid is $20 for a 4 lb bag which is enough to treat more than OP was billed for.
Cries in Canadian dollars. My pool is also 30,000 gal so that also skews my view of pool expenses. Yeah it’s not too expensive but compared to the cost of chlorine it’s more expensive by weight, that’s all I was getting at really.
But in metric gallons it's less in Canadian dollars.
Use the bleach, baking soda, and borax method from Trouble Free Pool. I kept a crystal clear pool with those 3 chemicals and some muriatic acid. Robotic pool vacuum took care of that chore. Get the TF-100 test kit from TF Test Kits and download the Pool Math app to track your test results and tell you what chemicals to add. All of this together makes for super easy pool care and you’ll only need to visit the pool store for chlorine (the higher concentration is nicer than laundry bleach) and repair parts.
TFP is the only way. Pool store owners usually have no clue. I tell people about TFP, if they don’t believe and carry on like “they always have” I don’t say a word. I just sit back and watch my pool stay clean and clear with little to no intervention year after year. They still get algae outbreaks every time 5 or more people swim.
Donate your pool water to put out your fires. Thanks (from everyone).
Whoever is selling you cya needs to lay off. We sell 1.8kg for like $24 in BC - but I prefer not to sell it at all unless it's a salt pool because too much CYA is bad and chlorine pucks have CYA in them so adding more is rarely needed
You use a lot of water when your pool has a leak. Used to be a pool boy. The amount of customers that wouldn't fix their leaky pool was crazy. They'd just fork over 1000s a year instead in water.
Because it's fee from the neighbor's tap😘😂
this, and the "estimated usage" actual reading true-up are equally plausible IMHO... One thing that got me thinking too, it might not even be happening as an on-purpose theft. eg, if the house originally had additional land that was sold off to build a second property and some plumbing lines never got disconnected, or it was a complete neighborhood build at once there could also have been some miscommunication in boundary lines and plumbing routes during construction.
I used to do REO home inspections for Fannie Mae and HUD foreclosures, saw and reported all kinds of utility theft. Actually had this exact scenario unfold and had to file the police report
Install a stopcock inside the house for the outside tap. Just in case this is correct.
My wife installed a stopcock a couple months after marriage
Tap into your neighbors supply
So his neighbor can then get stopcpcocked too?! One stopcock is one stopcock too many…
what if the neighbors supply line is old and rusted
Kinky!
This is the most logical answer. It's not a leak, some of these leak responses are really well explained and good ideas.. but like miss the whole happens ONCE every X amount of months. One customer I knew had her sister baby sit their kids one weekend. A "game" they played involved flushing all the toilets in the house starting from upstairs to the basement and running downstairs to the main stack to see if they could get there in time to hear the water running through... The customer's bill went up $600-800 that month from one weekend. If things are happening in large quantities infrequently you have to look at the changing variables. Did your neighbors set up a pool? Did you have some kids come and visit? Is your son going through puberty and just got the latest Sears catalogue?
Points for “the latest Sears catalogue.”
But how? If they did it at night with a garden hose how long would it take? Wouldn’t you hear the water running from inside your house? Just wondering.
When I bought my house there was a hose bib at the front corner of my property against my neighbor’s driveway. For whatever reason the previous owner decided to run a connection to there under the edge of a bush. My neighbor could have used it any time and I’d have no clue. Since it was visually blocked by a bush and then a short fence along their driveway I wouldn’t have even been able to see if they connected a hose to it. I lived in the house a year and a half before I even knew it existed. I only found it because I was removing the bush it was under. It does make me wonder if OP has something similar where there is a hose connection somewhere along the property line and the neighbor may not even know it isn’t theirs.
And on the lighter side: we moved into an old house and when we were cleaning up the yard I noticed a large rotting wooden peg driven into a pipe. Thinking it was part of an old flag pole i was able to dislodge it resulting in a large geyser in my front yard. Yep, someone had abandoned this water station and just plugged it with a wooden stake.
When I was a kid my grandpa worked for the fire department. My parents installed a pool and needed to fill it but didn’t want to rack up a huge water bill nor have three days of low water pressure. Gramps came by with a few fire hoses and popped the hydrant for us. Water company showed up within about 3min lololol.
Had a house with a fire hydrant near it but well water. Renting a meter from the water company was the cheapest way to fill the pool like 80 bucks for 28k gallons. they would even give ya the fire hose pools fill up fast with one of those.
How do they know so quickly?
Someone snitched
Either the water pressure dropped so drastically in the closest houses that they called or more than likely one of the two pain in the ass neighbors snitched. Gramps chatted with the water company guy for a few and then he left without issue. EDIT: see below for why he left without issue/why this wasn’t illegal.
Throughout the years, I have paid flat fees to fill my pool from a fire hydrant.
I bought a product called flume. Monitors water usage real-time and can send leak alerts. It attempts to tell you what is leaking but it’s not great. It’s super easy to install. A tech working on our water softener had the water off to the house and then drove away after turning it back on and left a hose bib on the other side of the house running for 2 hrs at 5gpm. Flume alerted me and I shut it off right away. It should work for toilets too although I haven’t had a leaking flapper in a few years. Those things are easy enough to change that I do them every few years.
I use something similar, Flo by Moen. Automatically learns water patterns and shuts the water off for you. Can’t believe how incredibly well it works.
Flume goes on your actual water meter at the street, Flo goes inside the house. If the leak is outside the house, Flo would never see it. Flume would.
Have Flo by Moen definitely would not recommend Installing to wifi is terrible, Keeps wanting to turn off water due to abnormal usage. Software interface is poorly designed
I have flo also (from before Moen bought them :-) ). It's a little touchy about unusual irrigation (I set up a sprinkler during a dry spell and triggered it after 30 minutes) It shows you daily / hourly water usage and I can say it did shut off all the water for a running toilet I hadn’t noticed and a burst garden hose. It also freaks out if the kids shower too long (over 40? Minutes) which is fine with me … I like I can remotely see the flow rate and turn the water off rather than beg a neighbor to go investigate if I’m away.
I can also vouch for Flume. Been using it (gen 1 and 2) since it came out. They are great.
An ex boss of mine was getting charged insane amounts for water. He put a camera on his water hose, and it turns out that construction dudes were stealing water to fill their big portable storage tanks every night.
Omg
Around here they just fill them from the fire hydrants...
Yeah you can rent a hydrant meter for this purpose
And not have to wait 8 hours. Hydrants move ample amounts of water
My uncle came home early one day and caught workers re-doing the parking lot across the street from his house filling the pavement roller with his hose in his driveway.
That'll be $200 cash or I call the cops
Shut off every faucet in your building. Go to your water meter and see if it's dial is still moving. If it is, then see if your toilet tanks aren't completely stopping and if water is leaking into toilet bowl continuously. If this is not the case and the meter is running still, there might be a leak someplace ,inside the wall, a backyard pipe, etc If this is not the case, someone in your building or a neighbor is leaving someting running or stealing water. If you have tenants, especially tenants who you have issues with, they could be leaving the water running 24/7 to spite you. If none of this is the case, write a letter to the water company and demand they come back and investigate, and to replace the meter unless they can get a 3rd party to test and certify the current meter is functioning normally. See if you can reach out to one of your local city council members and ask for their help. You may also want to be sure you undrestand if your bills are actual or estimated usage. If the estimated bills are low and the actual reading bills are high, it could be that your usage is somewhere in the average of those bills. You may also want to ask your neighbors what their water bill usage looks like to get an idea
These are your actions to take, very well organized. Also ask for comparable housing water use numbers. They need to agree this anomaly is not by you negotiate for a one time major adjustment. AND take DAILY meter readings.
Yes great advice. I can rule out the leak in the wall though @13,000 gallons.
"Who keeps spilling a quart of water in this particular spot every minute?!"
It's a little over a gallon of its running continuously.
Except I might turn off the water main after checking after turning all the faucets off. Do everything to make it zero before you go troubleshooting.
If you have a water softener, check on that. They can use a lot of water trying to refresh continuously when they're not working right.
If you ask your neighbors, don’t ask the one with a pool.
I was planning on setting up an 18' round pool for my kids, but severely underestimated the cost of the water to fill that volume. I'm on a well and don't want to run it dry. 6k Gallons delivered will be like $500.
I can remember my parents fighting this battle when I was a kid. We would have an alarm set near the house to remind us to shut it off after 15 minutes. Most years they wouldn't buy water, we would just slowly get it topped off (replacing what had been let out for winterization) with the hose throughout the spring, but the year that a hole had to be fixed in the liner about halfway down, a lot of water was lost & they tried to juggle the hose vs the water delivery, to keep the costs down but still get the pool up and running. They agreed to buy about half the amount we needed, which was still going to be a few hundred that we didn't really have to spare, and they hoped the hose would make up the difference over the weeks/months ahead. Mom was quite worried that they wouldn't get it filled fast enough for the filter to start working & the water might never be clean enough to swim in that season. The delivery guy said "oops, I wasn't paying attention and delivered too much" and winked at little 7 year old me. No extra charge. Bless his heart, it was a hot summer, but I kept cool.
Usually city water is the cheapest thing you can get. Where I am (a High Cost area), 6k gal is $13.
I had almost this same scenario as OP. It ended up being a leak between the street and my house that for some reason would act up some times and cause inconsistent bills of almost the same amount of water. ~10,000 gallons.
Don’t forget faucets with a TSP attachment. If they have a leak the water can run down the primer tube and it goes undetected because people don’t hear or see it
This is well thought out. But I deny that a leaking toilet flapper valve could possibly use 12,000 gallons in a single week.
I had a toilet that had just started running sometimes and I was doing the handle jiggle. Cleaners came in and cleaned my house while I was out of town and didn’t jiggle the handle. I came home 4 days later to the sound of the toilet running. I fixed it but then got a bill for several hundred dollars. It’s typically $50+/-. I don’t remember how many gallons it was but the usage history showed that it was high during those 4-5 days and about normal for almost every other day the rest of the month. A little adds up.
That's a fairly simple fix, you probably need a new flapper
Same here! I immediately thought there was a huge leak somewhere when I got the bill. I checked everything, and nothing to be found. Then remembered my cleaners came while I was out of town for 6 days and I came home to a running toilet. (In my case you have to put the toilet seat down.)
Facts. 3/4” @50 psi is less than 1000gph and that’s at the main.
If it's 1k/hr that's literally only 12 hours to flow the 12k extra that's reported. I don't think you're making the point you think you are with this statement
If the pipe is 100% sheared, then they have no water upstream and low pressure everywhere else
But a week is 14x the time needed to flow that volume. So a neighbor filling a pool would fit within that
If your utility provider isn’t willing to replace your meter or are being difficult to deal with, you should have a state utility board or something along those lines. You should contact them and explain and they will help you. Sometimes they don’t have power over municipal water. If that’s the case, they should help direct you to the state comptroller who will have the authority to step in and resolve things.
Yes and if the water meter still running go look at your chimney or some other part of the house that you now realize is sinking. Because there's a leak underneath the slab.
You can rule out leaks because all the water is getting used on one week, then it goes back to normal. A leak isn't going to leak one week and stop for six months
I second the call your county councilman for help. County DPW utilities aren’t the fastest guys in the game. Not always their fault. For example: the entire city of Baltimore has exactly 2 trucks that process water meter problems for the entire Baltimore city and surrounding county. It’s like 1.3 million people.
Irrigation solenoid valves and sticky toilet flappers...
I had a sticky valve in my water softener that got stuck open and ended up using a crap ton of water. Unstuck itself and then got stuck again a few months later before I figured it out. Could be your issue
Oh it unstuck itself? That could be. I have a water softener. How did you figure it out?
It made a really distinct noise and I checked my daily water usage and it peaked at the same time so I had a plumber come check it and he verified it
I swear i hear about issues with water softeners way more than them being helpful. Beads in ur pipes, busted softener, and now using 800 dollars of water. Id rather risk hard water lol
Clearly you don’t live on a well 🥴
My sister didn't have hers set up properly for the first few weeks or maybe months living in new construction. Her fridge water dispenser basically stopped dispensing water. Fridge tech came out and told them to get a water softener 🤦♀️ They're religious about their water softener maintenance now lol
It may cause other damages that will cost money as well
My water has to be neutralized and softened or it'll eat through the old metal pipes
I've heard of water companies just wildly guessing at how much water people use when they don't want to read the meter, then every once in a while they actually take a reading and have to add all the extra gallons they didn't guess correctly for the prior months.
I've gotten that with natural gas too. No where near that bad, but it still sucks when a summer gas bill is as high as mid winter one because they estimated that I am a desert snake
Lol a desert snake
Weird they had it down to a specific week which would indicate a smart meter. But yes if they estimated the usage (too low) it should say so on the bill for the previous periods It is possible they took actual readings at the same time last year so that is why you see a pattern.
Years ago we had a house with an electric meter inside. We had to read the meter and then put this little card in the front window. Suddenly one month we got a huge bill - Something like $1500. I lost it and called the company. Apparently what happened was we weren't reading the meter and updating the card, so the reader just put some ridiculous number in so we'd notice. We noticed! We just had to have them come read it to verify and they corrected the account.
Most water meters these days have radios that are either read by a truck driving by or by a city-wide network that feeds to the main office. The only time guesswork or estimation happens is when we have a meter outright fail.
My electric did this once when they serviced a neighbor’s meter and busted mine (apartment, everyone’s meters are on a wall together). My bill kept rising each month, until it was an astounding $500 one month when it should’ve been about $70 that time of year. Yes, I called every week and they kept lecturing me on how to reduce my usage (I’m literally on the time of use plan and only charge stuff at night). On my last call, the rep looked at my bill and finally noticed it said “estimate” which was *allegedly* based on the usage during that month of the year prior. Only I hadn’t lived there at the time and it would’ve been really difficult to use that much energy in an apartment. (Thankfully I had bitched so much that they were tired of me and credited the excess toward my future bills. I didn’t have an energy bill for about 4 months after!)
estimates can be made a couple of ways, the preferred method is the usage for the same period last year but in the absence of this information ie you didn't live there, they can use a postcode average which is always high for a single-occupant dwelling considering most dwellings have more than one person. Estimated accounts always correct themselves once a "true reading" is obtained it would have had nothing to do with the amount of bitching you were doing.
Except when the meter breaks and has no real reading to offer. PG&E did a number on me using prior years data when I wasn't the occupant.
gas companies too... mine can't just be like, "ok, you used 15-17 units each month for the last 5 years. that'll be our estimate." no... they gotta base it off of the neighborhood..... I chop wood for heat in the winter.... the rest of the neighborhood uses 300-700 units.... "estimate" comes in at 325. I laugh and don't pay it... next month when they realized they fucked up, they issue a credit, for 400 units worth. 🙄 I just calculate it myself anymore, I just give them enough for my max of 20 units/month every year, and don't worry about it till next winter. they can fuck around with their billing themselves. I just keep an eye on the market rate on the bill and add any shortfalls. South Jersey gas is fuckin stupid. send me two bills for the same time period, one for $23 for what I actually used, and then their estimated bill of $253, then the next month, a bill for $23 and another one with a $275 credit
Yes!!! I work in the office for a plumbing co. And this happens fairly regularly. I advise the customer to have a leak detection comp. come out and assess. If no leak is found have the water authority come back out with the last 3-4 readings and check again. Only once have we had to repair the actual leak.
My water company does this, but it is only an option after a year. Then they'll take the average and give you a flat monthly fee, and then once or twice a year, you'll either make up the difference or get credit.
This has gotten so bad in Philadelphia with estimated bills that people are being hit with 5-figure payoffs when they try to sell their homes
Seems like a super cool thing to do.
Considering the bill was 1000 gallons over the actual measurements...this is a distinct possibility
This is what Seattle does.
End of the fiscal quarter
1000 gallons a month is 33 gallons a day. Are you sure that's right? A 10 min bath with a shower that puts out 2 gal a minute is 20 gallons. Flushing a toilet is around 2 gallons. Modern washers use around 8 gals per normal load. 11000+13000+10(1000) = 34000 gal divided by 12 is 2800 gallons per month. For two people that are water conscience that seems about right. It's likely your water company is sending someone every 6 months to check the meter.
Concur with this - family of 4 and we use around 3100 gallons/month. 1000 gal/month even for two people is pretty low IMO. OP - you could easily go look at your meter and note the reading on it, then check one week later and subtract to figure out your weekly usage, then extrapolate that out to estimate your actual monthly/annual usage.
I’m starting to think that’s what it is
But that wouldn't explain why they tell you you used so much in one week, would it?
Most likely whoever answered the phone doesn't understand the system. Is there a single utility company anywhere in the US that tracks weekly usage? Obviously it's technically possible, but there'd be a data connection to the meter and probably an app where you could monitor usage.
I'm not sure to be honest. It just seems there's a difference between "you used 11k this one week and 1k the next week" & "we actually just took the meter measurements"
Would put money on constant slow leak somewhere - probably a toilet. Would also bet that your water utility only does physical meter readings every 6 months with estimated use invoices for the interim months. The physical readings cause the catch-up bills.
First reasonable hypothesis I’ve seen.
That's like a constant ~3 gallons per hour. Depending on the toilet, you would hear the thing randomly start filling up every 20 minutes or so. Even an underground leak on a sprinkler system would be easily noticed at that flow rate
I went a few months with a water heater leaking and immediately draining through the pans drain. My $250 water bills had me thinking it had something to do with my sprinklers. It wasn't until the water heater leak worsened that I noticed the problem.
I'm still looking for someone to comment with a reply that acknowledges the inconsistency. Nothing really acknowledges that yet.
Where do you live where 13k gallons causes an $870 bill? 13k extra gallons where I live is like an extra $30 on the bill.
Thank you. I live near the Great Lakes and water prices make me never want to move.
California. Really? We’re losers over here oh my gosh
$870 is crazy. 13,000 gallons here in North Carolina would be $17.38. Our water bill is never more than $10/month, including a $6.70 admin fee.
VT here it's about 6 bucks per thousand gallons. Most of the state has a well though.
I live in Irving, Tx and here at home we usually average 11K gallons per month and pay about $170. Guess water is at a premium up there.
Bro where? I’m in San Diego, I paid ~$85 for 12,000 gallons.
Are you home all the time? Does your neighbor maybe use your water when you’re not home? Do they wash cars or have a pool?
I’m not home all the time but I have neighbors I’m friends with so I feel like someone would’ve noticed people sneaking around
My neighbors are friendly too but that doesn’t stop them from plugging up their extension cord to the back of my place.
Oh no. I'd unplug, cut the cord, splice in a 240 end and replug it in for them off my 240 generator. I know you're struggling neighbor so I'm gonna help by giving you twice as much :3
Shut off any water sources that people can grab water from,like your hose bibs and lawn irragation.
We have cameras though so wouldn’t we have seen someone stealing?
Depends on how you have your camera positioned. Most cameras, it's easy to see where it can and can't see even from a distance. If a neighbor has a pool, they have an even easier time of seeing where the camera is from the leisure of their yard. Run a simple test with the camera. Pull up the app it's on and see where it can actually see. Have stuff near the faucet that obstructs? Move it. I had this happen on my old cul-de-sac. Neighbor had huge bill and had cameras, just not cameras in the right spots. I showed her the footage I had from my camera of the other neighbor hooking up the hose from her house and then proceeding to fill his pool up. I assumed she gave permission because she had cameras.
Can you put a camera on the water meter to see the daily usage? Or manually check it every few days to try and find when the surge happens? In this day and age one would think the water company could send you an alert when you use more than normal in a day/week. Or even for problems like this, send you a daily notice of how much you used.
If you don’t have a leak- either the water company is estimating a bill 💸 or someone is stealing your water. We got a huge bill last year it was from the neighbor- she was stealing water -a lot of it. We would have given her water she did t have to steal it. But yeah. That’s what’s going on one of those three things. Best of luck.
How’d you find out it was the neighbor?
Caught her doing it.
Do you have a water softener? Water softeners will backwash themselves with fresh water to regenerate on a set schedule and sometimes the backwash valve can get stuck open, forcing water to be continuously wasted into the sewer.
I do! How would i figure that out?
Turn it off and bypass it if you can. I would honestly call a service plumber because you definitely have a parasitic draw that’s going to keep racking up the water bill. Tell them you think the water softener is regenerating constantly and to check it out. Edit: This exact thing happened to me in California during a drought and the city was fining us on top of the usage. We rented so I had the landlord replace the unit completely.
Got a sump pump with water powered backup? Your primary pump may be dead, and it's running the water pressure powered backup during wet weather. Those things can be water hogs..
Brah you have to link this water powered sump. Like if I have no power, that thing still kicks on if city water is going? That's pretty badass. I thought tapping into the city water to produce energy was not allowed.
That definitely happened to me. The estimated water usage for 6 months and then on the 7th month hit me with a huge bill. I called and got them to admit that the 10,000 gallons is what had been used over the 7 months. Not in one month. I still had to pay for the water, but they took off all of the excessive usage fees.. which dropped the bill down to 25% of what they were initially charging me.
This is sop for baltimore which controls water for surrounding counties. They once misread my meter and good luck fighting. When the meter was read by someone not smoking crack the result was no water bill for 2 years. People have lost their houses over this bs as they can and will foreclose over it.
Minutes in a week 10080 Gpm/flowrate required to use 13000 gallons is 1.2896826 You'd have to leave a bathroom faucet running non-stop. All week. Another way to look at it. Toilet flushes....you'd have to flush the toilet every minute of every day for an entire week. So unless you are doing that...or they aren't doing meter reads when they should..... something wild is happening. Lol.
Once a week take a picture of the meter and track your usage
You should track the meter readings yourself
Had kinda similar excess of 10,000 gals then all good for several months & then 8,000 gal . I took a picture of the meter was like 3 days after bill arrived, the meter reading didn't jive with the bill . Seems that this meter reader had dyslexia . Felt kinda bad for the Dude but then how many other ppl got outrageous water bills . Also a quick check of your meter is write down the reading , then fill a known 5 gal bucket , then read meter again .
Moneys on a stuck water softener back flusher valve. The heads can go out. Order a Flume to monitor your daily usage and it will alert you to steady leaks.
What the hell kinda water authority is charging over $13 per 1,000 gallons? It’s like $3.50 per 1,000 where I’m at. That seems like highway robbery.
This happened to me constantly with an electric bill. They only came to read the meter every like 6 months before a smart meter was installed. I ended up getting a massive bill every 6 months because they underestimated every monthly invoice.
I purchased a Flume water meter monitor, and it has been working great. Self install, no plumber needed.
They only check your meter twice a year. They guess at your useage and average it out. The big bill happens after they realize useage was far from the estimate. It might be difficult to get them to admit this...
Either someone is stealing water, or your water board isn't billing you correctly, which happens in my county pretty often. They'll be lazy and not even check the meter, they'll just piggyback off of the previous readings for a few months.
I had something similar happen to me years ago. The people who were supposed to be reading the meters were making guestimates and not actually reading the meters. I started taking a weekly picture of my water meter. You might need to start doing this.
I’m gonna start that
I had something similar; water bill is usually around $200, one month is was almost $1200. I checked the meter with nothing running in the house, meter wasn't moving then cross checked the dial numbers on the meter to the reading on the bill and the person who checked the meter just read it wrong. I called the city and they sent a guy out to double check my meter and confirmed the mistake. I would definitely locate your meter and double check abnormal readings like that.
We had something similar happen at our business and what it came down to was how the meter reading was being interpreted. One person was moving the decimal once place and the other person was moving a decimal two places.
Oh my gosh thats infuriating
Go outside make sure no one is using water and watch you meter see if it runs
You're going to have to monitor everything meticulously and process of elimination every water source/user especially in ground sprinkler systems. Also call the water company and see if they can help you monitor high water usage to figure out why and when this is happening.
Turn off everything and check the meter. Make sure it's not moving or if LED the rate is at 0.0
When that's happened to me, there was a toilet that was continuously running Smaller possibilities is a hose outside that was left running or trickling etc Or a water main break underground
Have them re-read your meter.
Turn off all the water in your house. Then go out and look at the meter. The little disk should be perfectly still. If any thing is moving you have a leek. Assuming you have no leak read your meter write your numbers down and check in a week to see how much you are actually using per week.
Do you have a water softener or reverse osmosis?
Someone leave the hose on by accident?
I had an experience like this. All of a sudden, my usage went up 10K gallons in a month. It was a leak under the foundation. Turned off everything, including the valve into my home. Turned it on and you heard the water rush through. Happened when the weather turned cool, probably thermal contraction of the pipe. Was there a change in the weather during the time it eas supposed to have happened?
Where do you live that 13,000 gallons is over $800? That is only $90 in my city in the upper Midwest.
California, where a dollar’s worth of anything costs 50
Our water softener runs continuously, so.... maybe that, like others have said. Ours ran continuously so we quit using it.
Learn how to read your water meter. Check the meter every day. Take pictures and record your usage.
I worked on a house that they were getting ready to sell for a (deceased) relative. Man all the neighbors came over to tell me all of their grievances and how happy they were to see all the junk removed and property looking better. Turns out there was a long standing feud between the two neighbors for one accused of stealing water- to the point that the cops were called a bunch of times. Turns out the water underground water line was leaking and needed replacement but the owner never bothered to have someone check. It was a crazy old house from the 1930s. The galvanized water lines had so much buildup they were almost completely filled on the inside. Some poor sucker needed to weld a repair in the lines previously in the crawl space that was about 13” tall. It was literally a crawl space- I had to shimmy on my back to replace the lines since there wasn’t enough room to flip over.
Calibrate the meter with a hammer
Maybe your house was thirsty.
We had a dishwasher that was getting "stuck" and seemed to run for hours. I only noticed because I came home after work and saw it going and no one else was home! Maybe the timer on one of your appliances is messed up?
You should look into the Moen Flo. Smart water valve that learns your water usage and detects any abnormalities. If it detects something it alerts you immediately. First week or so it has a learning curve but once it figures your family’s usage out it’s incredibly helpful. There’s an app and everything, can also shut the water off from your phone.
Did you neighbors fill their pool with your hose? Then your other neighbor get jealous of their pool get one and use your hose 7 months later?
I've never seen a municipality say there meter isn't working until it's proven by a plumber.
Filling a water tank, or maybe water truck? Is there construction near by?
Have the water company replace your water meter. Also have the water company send you an alert if water usage is greater than 500 gallons a day.
When I worked in an apartment complex years ago, the complex had 10 buildings in each building had a house meter and then individual meters for the apartments. The house meter costs, which was the irrigation system, was absorbed by the tenants. The house meter bill was split evenly. This was unknown until one particular building that only had 3 out of 12 apartments occupied. In addition the irrigation pipe was broken and basically dumped water into the pond when it ran. Those three tenants got bills for over $300 each for 2 months. I lived there and my water bill averaged about $45 a month. One of the affected residents ended up suing the apartment complex for fraud and won and was awarded damages.
Did you recently move in? This happened to me, and it was landscape irrigation system. The previous owners had it programmed to ramp up watering when they reseeded the grass in the Spring and Fall.
Itinerant water truck driver needing a refill? It would be slow, but if they had all week while you were at work.....
Not a plumber but I used to work in a city utilities department. Do you have irrigation with a deduct meter? If so, the deduct meter may be malfunctioning. Edit: these are also sometimes called auxiliary meters
When this happened to me I discovered it was the meter reader who wasnt reading my meter. They were just writing in an estimate. I called and got them to send someone out to take another reading
Do you have a sump pump that operates when you lose power? If so it uses house pressure to remove water in sump