I discovered recently on my digital water meter website that I have water usage over night. It's like 2 gallons/hr.

However, on sunday Jan 28th, from 10pm (the 27th) to 8am, every hour had 151 gallons used. Then at 9 and 10am, it's like 180gal (likely because we woke up and added the extra 30 gal), then we left that day at 11 am, and it's down to 2 gallons an hour again.

What in the world could use 151 gallons an hour? and then mysteriously stop an hour or 2 after we wake up?

For the ongoing 2 gal/hr leak I apparently have, I thought it was a particular toilet that runs, but I shut it off when we were at a hotel for 2 days/1 night, and I still had the 2-4 gallons per hour usage the entire time we were gone, so I need to investigate more there, but this 151 gallons is alarming.

Irrigation valve is closed, so that's not it. I have no water anywhere.. that's 1500 gallons overnight, so that would be obvious if it wasn't going back into the sewer.

Was it just that one night, or has it been every night? If just one, I'd say it was just something wrong with the meter and was a bad reading.

Have you checked to see if you actually even have the 2gal/hour leak? I assume that even though it's electric there is still some indicator of water flow, though I have never messed with an electronic meter. You should be able to use the electronic log but I wouldn't trust anything short of an actual reading on the meter. Shut absolutely everything off in your house and go look at the meter. Don't forget about things like the water heater, ice maker, etc.

TXAG 05 said:

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Was it just that one night, or has it been every night? If just one, I'd say it was just something wrong with the meter and was a bad reading.

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the 151 gallons for 10 hours was one night.

I just got my bill in, usage was 6k gal, last Jan was 4k. Jan 28th alone was 1800 gallons, so that 1500-2000gal extra seems to be actual/recorded usage; it's on my bill.

I was thinking the same thing you are, maybe the data just isn't being shown accurately, but I'm paying for it.

chickencoupe16 said:

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Have you checked to see if you actually even have the 2gal/hour leak? I assume that even though it's electric there is still some indicator of water flow, though I have never messed with an electronic meter. You should be able to use the electronic log but I wouldn't trust anything short of an actual reading on the meter. Shut absolutely everything off in your house and go look at the meter. Don't forget about things like the water heater, ice maker, etc.

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this is on my list of what to do next, I'm going to close the supply valve to the entire house for a few nights in a row to see if it reads empty.

So I totally forgot I have an aprilaire 600, which the website says uses 3 gph.
That is the small useage throughout the day and at night.

I have no idea what the 1500 gallons in 10 hours is.

Are your sprinklers scheduled to run at night? That's the only thing I could imagine turning on overnight with a massive leak

no i'm in denver, irrigation is turned off and valve closed in october.

Water softener or pool backwash? That's still a ton of water, but just thinking out loud about things that could use a slug of water.

We had a huge leak that took me a minute to figure out and turns out the pool autofiller was glitching and dumping a bunch of water. Do you have anything like that?

Otherwise I'd try turning water off at your house and see if there's either a leak between the meter and the house or the meter is glitching. You should be able to isolate that by then turning water off at the meter and see if it still continues to register usage.

….Or new construction around you.

I am baffled with no suspects in yard irrigation so ...

the most common cause for a high water bill is running water from your toilet.
A continuously running toilet can waste up to 200 gallons a day or more depending on the volume flow down the drain.
BUT this would not stop-start and pick on nighlty hours ... except sometimes the flapper sits well and other times not ...

neighbor stealing to water lawn?
Watering with a typical sprinkler using a standard 5/8" garden hose for one hour uses about 1,020 gallons of water

teenage girls can use up 1000 gallons nightly BTW, not that you have any

Have them replace the faulty meter.

Water person came out today and checked meter, it was running, but intermittently, which points to a toilet.

I don't know if a toilet can blow through 150 gallons an hour, but that's my only guess.

I am in Denver guys, no one is using any water outside, we just got a foot of snow lol.
No construction either.


I turned off my humidifier and will check each toilet this weekend. I need to get a zero reading overnight as a baseline. Meter person said there was no signs of leak in the box. (I wasn't home)

That's right. A toilet flows between 2-3gpm. Outside faucet is about 15-16gpm depending on water pressure.

150 gals / 60 mins = 2.5gpm.
I would've thought that would be the first thing you checked.

Comeby! said:

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That's right. A toilet flows between 2-3gpm. Outside faucet is about 15-16gpm depending on water pressure.

150 gals / 60 mins = 2.5gpm.
I would've thought that would be the first thing you checked.

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my toilet has been intermittently running for about a month, giving me a handful of gallons per hour throughout nights and workdays.

So it didn't occur to me that when I got, one time only, 150 gallons per hour for 10 hours, that it was the toilet.

Do you have Flume? Or similar? That's how I've been able to keep up with my water consumption at home.
Snapshot from mine.

Comeby! said:

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Do you have Flume? Or similar? That's how I've been able to keep up with my water consumption at home.
Snapshot from mine.

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my water district provides aquahawk.

Is this basically access to their meter? Or is this an independent meter? Flume is an independent meter with realtime data. There are others out there.

Comeby! said:

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Is this basically access to their meter? Or is this an independent meter? Flume is an independent meter with realtime data. There are others out there.

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Does the box itself connect to wifi? I didn't see that mentioned. My water meter is like 600+ feet from my house so it wouldn't reach, but this is very intriguing.

The box connects to its own WiFi 'box' which is inside your home, and that connects to your WiFi.

Comeby! said:

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The box connects to its own WiFi 'box' which is inside your home, and that connects to your WiFi.

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Dang. I doubt that will work given the distance between my house and water meter. This thing would be awesome to have given the vast number of potential leak locations we have.

I'd look it up, not sure what comms protocol it uses but I don't think it's WiFi

Yea i will have to contact them. I looked at their site for like half an hour last night and didn't see anything at all about restrictions or limitations etc.

1000' feet range according to their website.

https://flumewater.com/product/#:~:text=Connect%20the%20Flume%20Bridge%20to,up%20to%201%2C000%20feet%20away.

Weird, I read a ton on there and completely missed that. Thanks.

Comeby! said:

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Is this basically access to their meter? Or is this an independent meter? Flume is an independent meter with realtime data. There are others out there.

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the meter was replaced with a new one with communications built in. Now they don't have to come read the meters anymore, and it takes real time data which I can access on aquahawk website (or maybe an app, I haven't looked in the app store to see if it exists.)

You can set up alerts and all that.

The homeowner didn't have to do anything other than create an account at aquahawk and pair up to their water meter/acct. The water district swapped all the meters and mailed this info out to inform the homeowners.

This was back in 2019.

I don't even know where my meter is, the water company doesn't seem to want me to mess with it. Anytime I asked, they said just make an appt and they'll come out and help me troubleshoot a leak.

Can it detect down to a few ounces? The leak detection part with notifications and potential cost of remediation was worth it to me. Plus it's a good check meter.

I loved using the Flume at our house until our mechanical water meter died. When the water company (SAWS) replaced the old meter with a new fancy electronic meter, it was not compatible with the Flume. We can look at the SAWS website to see usage, but it's delayed a few hours and does not send real time alerts like the Flume did.