Holy Water Bill Batman!

[Douglas Hardman]

My fiancé and I moved out of her house in November, and we rented the house out starting the first week of December. Her normal water bill is about $30 a month. (3 bedroom, one bath, no dishwasher, 2.5 people living there.) Usage from the water company shows using 0.2-0.4MCF per month...consistently...for 2 years. The renters move in, and December's bill shows 1.4 MCF...or about $75. Then we get January's bill and it's 2.5MCF...and $115.

So the tenant reaches out to me last week and says "Any idea why our water bill is so high?" to which I respond "I was wondering the same thing!"

They've been model tenants, and I have no reason to suspect they're doing anything nefarious. She says 1-2 people showering a day, and 2-ish loads of laundry a week. Normal usage...about exactly what we were doing when we lived there with the same number of people. Since the sewer bill is based on the water bill, that's sky-high too.

So I call the water company to have them come out and look at the meter, and it was a fight just to get them to come out. They're standing by "the meter is always right" but I can't see how a family of 2 could have possibly used 19,000gal of water in a month. If they were doing laundry 24/7 for the entire month, that'd still only be 12,000gal.

I've been over and checked the pipes and the faucets...no leaks. Nothing seems to be running in the background. Everything in the house is less than 2y old.

Any ideas? Any experience fighting a water company?