> Water & Wastewater

What is a Water Check-up?


City staff will come to your home or business to:

• Evaluate all water uses on your property
• Provide recommendations to you for improved efficiency for both indoor usage and outdoor usage
• Evaluate the irrigation system
• Provide specific recommendations on irrigation improvements, scheduling, and upgrades
• Demonstrate how to read your meter and check for leaks

Call 564-5460 to schedule your free water check-up today!

Irrigation Evaluation


Similar to a water check-up, an Irrigation Evaluation focuses solely on outdoor water usage. City staff will come to your home or business to:

• Check efficiency of irrigation system
• Develop an irrigation schedule
• Provide information on landscaping and irrigation technology and rebate programs
• Provide specific recommendations on irrigation improvements, scheduling, and upgrades
• Demonstrate how to read your meter and check for leaks

Call 564-5460 to schedule your free irrigation evaluation today!

Do I Have a Leak?

A good method to check for leaks is to examine your winter water usage graph on your bill. It’s likely that a family of four has a serious leak problem if its winter water use exceeds 16 HCF per month. Check your water meter before and after a two-hour period when no water is being used. If the meter does not read exactly the same, you probably have a leak. See more info below.

Using Your Water Meter to Find a Leak

Your Water Meter  ,  Medidor de Agua
Quick tips:

•  Keep water off -  When checking your water meter be sure there is no water being used on the property.
• Find your meter -  Typically its in a gray plastic or cement rectangular box, normally located in front of your house close to the street and/or sidewalk.
• Open your meter box - Open the meter box by inserting the screwdriver in the hole on the top of the box and lifting the cover off.
• Read your meter -  On the meter face you will see a red needle (similar to the hand of a clock) or a small triangle.  As water flows through the meter, the needle or triangle moves.  If the needle or triangle on the face of the meter is moving, either someone is using water or you have a leak.  If the needle is not moving, you still may have a slow leak.
• Use your meter to detect a slow leak - Use a marking pen and mark the location of the needle on the face of the meter. Come back in 2 or more hours and check to see if the needle has moved past the pen mark. If it has, you have a slow leak. Remember water must remain off during this process.
  
  

Checking Your Yard and Irrigation System for Leaks

• Observe irrigation in use – look for broken sprinkler heads, missing emitters, cut drip lines, and saturated areas. Check your irrigation schedule (length of time, number of days and stations).
• Change your irrigation controller’s back-up battery – the battery in your irrigation controller ensures that your irrigation controller will keep your watering schedule during a power outage. If the battery is dead and the power goes out, irrigation controllers return to the default mode (usually 15 minutes, every station, every day at night), doubling your water bill.
• Irrigation valve box can leak - Listen for the sound of running water at the pressure regulator where the water line comes into the house.
• Look for drips at all outside plumbing and irrigation.

Checking for leaks inside your home

• Check your toilet!
  20% of all toilets leak. Click here for more information.
• Look for drips - faucets, fixtures, hoses and plumbing in kitchens, bathrooms, laundry rooms, and appliances and at all outside plumbing and irrigation.
• Water softeners can malfunction - Check the salt reservoir. Increased salt use correlates to increased water usage, and may indicate a change in the regeneration schedule or malfunction.

Checking your appliances
(courtesy of h2ouse.org)

Water heater leaks are usually quite obvious and you will discover substantial amounts of water on the floor around your heater. Normally, the first sign of a heater problem is water dripping from the bottom of the jacket. This indicates that the tank has corroded through.

Leaks in an on-demand hot water system are likely to occur at the connections to the pump, which is typically placed under the sink located furthest from the hot water heater. Check for leaks around the pump as you would around any standard plumbing connections. Look for puddles of water under the sink and inspect the pipe connections to ensure that they are dry.

To check a pool, place a bucket on the top step of the pool and fill it with water to the pool's water level. After a day, if the water level in the pool is lower than the bucket, there probably is a leak in the pool structure or plumbing system.