The water meter: a record or water used or wasted

The water meter in your house is put there to register the amount of water used during the utility company billing period.  As far as the company is concerned, bill-gauging is the sold function of the meter, but you can use if for other purposes–to find out how much of your water bill is run up by certain jobs, such as laundry or lawn-sprinkling, or even to help discover a leak–providing you know how to read the meter correctly.

There are two types of meter face.  The direct-reading type gives a total at a glance, like a car odometer.  The cumulative-reading meter has a number of dails that must be read separately, then combined to get total usage in cubic feet.  Regardless of type, all meters have a special pointer that makes a complete revolution for each cubic foot of water being consumed at a given moment.

To measure the water you use when sprinkling the lawn, examine the meter before turning on the sprinkler and again after turning it off.  The difference between the two figures is the number of cubic feet of water you have used on the lawn.  To convert the answer to gallons, multiply it by 7.5, the number of gallons in one cubic foot. (while making such a test make sure that there are no other heavy demands on your plumbing system.)  The same method works, of course, if you want to determine water usage for anything from washing a car to filling a swimming pool.

If you want to find out if you have a leak, the fast-moving pointer is the one to watch.  Suppose, for example, you have a fresh-water stain on a ceiling and suspect a hidden pipe leak is the cause.  First be sure that all faucets are turned off, then watch the pointer for a few minutes.  If it stands still, the stain is due to another cuase, such as a faulty roof.

A gurgle detector for finding leaks

If you have no water meter–either because you have your own well or because you live in a community where residential water meters are not required–you can verify the existence of a hidden leak with any of several sound-amplifying devices available from plumbing supply stores.  Some look like an old-fashioned telephone receiver but but have only mechanical parts: a rod to pick up vibrations and a disk at the listening end to amplify these vibrations.  To use it, check that all faucets are turned off, then hold the point against the main supply pipe.  Put your ear to the wide end and listen.  If water is movign through the pipe–and leaking from it–you will hear it gurgle.