$1000 water bill on empty house…help

[Manish Agarwal]

Bought a new SFH in June. House was empty till Aug.

Got a water bill of $20 in June. Those were all fixed cost.

Then $130 bill in July. Bill details shows usage of 6,000 gallons. I filed a complaint with Charlotte Water. I also hired a technician to inspect whole house to find any leakage. None was found. Charlotte Water technician also found no leakage.

August bill - $980. Unbelievable. Bill details usage of 70,000 gallons. Charlotte water company says meter is fine and there is nothing they will do. Their reasoning is someone might have stole the water.

70,000 gallons. It takes 22,000 gallons to fill 1 large swimming pool. If water flow rate is 3 gallons per min the it will take 22,333 mins or 15.5 days to steal that kind of water. That does not make any sense to me.

Anyone had this problem. Any advice how I can solve this please?

Lesson learnt- turn off the water mains on an empty house.