Water Meters Needed- Which are best

Ok… we cry “Uncle”!!

City has finally started metering our park as a whole instead of just a flat rate per home. We thought we would be OK cost wise at first but several months in and the need to meter individual homes is significant.

Here are some basics about our situation that may help in narrowing down any advice you can provide.

  • We live quite a long ways away from our park so it is impossible for us to check the meters ourselves. We do have a park ‘overseer’ who could do it for us.
  • The meters themselves would have to be under each individual trailer with locations varying with each home due to it’s age and water hookup location. Crawling under each home every month is not a good solution… so we need something we can check via a wand or some other way.
  • Are there meters that have the control flow meters under the trailer but the readouts at the exterior of the trailer? That may be a really dumb question but worth the ask I suppose.
  • I have heard there are meters out there that can be hooked up via internet and monitored remotely. That would be great but service is spotty out there and we would need satellite service with a dish and boosters I would imagine. Not an out of the question deal but just an fyi.

Best meter out there???

Thanks all
Roger
Washington State

Hi Roger!
I think most here would point you towards Metron Metering. They allow for remote reading and data upload via cell networks. The main receiver/sending until can be mounted in one of the “good” spots with cell service. You simply login to the website and view the usage of each meter.

Contact Rick here: rick.minogue@metron-s2.com

This is the sales copy from a recent email I received from them as well, just for reference. Good luck!

Quick overview:
· We can install the meters – they have a battery powered am radio that broadcasts 1x per hour to the Gateway
· Our meters are wireless. There is no need for on-site personnel to read the meters, or for our staff to do a “drive by” to collect data
· A Gateway will be installed on the property, 1 Gateway per up to 200-300 meters. The gateway is powered by battery
· The gateway stores hourly consumption data from each meter
· At 1am, the Gateway sends the previous 24 hours of consumption data to Waterscope, our web portal via the Verizon Network
· Our meters and Gateway do not need an on-site power source or on-site internet access
· Our meters provide leak detection and high usage alerts
· We maintain the meters for the life of the contract (baring abuse by the client)
· You will have access to the online portal, Waterscope, including a tutorial and support. The system is intuitive and gives amazing data to the user and property owner. Access can be shared with on-site personnel and we can also create reports and do billing.
· We are flexible on what you need from us. The main thing is that we don’t do collections or handle money for our clients

Daniel

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Daniel
I want to personally thank you for leading me to Metron. We just finished our first month since having them installed and they are amazing. Would never had known to reach out to them without your advice.
Thanks again… you really helped me out.
Roger

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@Propboy40 Are you able to share the cost/pricing structure for them? Also do they coordinate the install, do you use your own vendor ? Thanks for any insight. It sounds interesting.

@Propboy40 Roger - glad I could help! The real thanks should go to Frank as I’m just copying and pasting his system onto our own operation. We’ve had Metron’s meters in our park since September and have been very happy with them. I’m hoping for a few more APIs from WaterScope into property management systems to automate things, but they’ll get there soon enough! Thanks for the shout out!

@Deleted_User_ME - when we installed back in August of 2018, they offered us several different options for the meters. These were all for 60-month contracts where Metron will maintain and warranty the meter’s operation outside of neglect and abuse. It also allows for access to their WaterScope software which will monitor the meters hourly and update you daily from the gateway they will install in the park. The contract will need to be renewed after 60 months at a quoted rate of $3.75/meter/mo.

Installed by Metron:

  1. $375/meter up front
  2. $175/meter up front, $3.75/mo/meter.
  3. $85/meter up front, $5.75/mo/meter

Self Installed:

  1. $340/meter up front
  2. $55/meter up front, $5.50/mo/meter

We opted to self install due to their schedule being 8 - 10 weeks out at that time. I also wanted to update all of the service lines in the park up to the homes to PEX so this was an opportune time to knock all of that out at once. In TN we’re able to charge back the meter fee so we paid the $55 up front and rolled the meter fee into the tenant’s water bill. They still come out ahead from having individual city meters, but of course, they don’t see it that way!

Of course, Metron’s quotes for your parks may differ but that’s where we landed.

I will say that having the daily alerts is great peace of mind in a small park where water bills have fluctuated from $900/mo to over $1,800/mo. One of our residents had a major blow out of some galvanized pipe in the pan of his home. He had no idea and would have likely let it run for months, but we were able to alert him and get the leak (waterfall?) stopped within a day. This happened to the previous owner as well with another home and caused the $1,800 water bill that he had to cover. That alone has likely paid for the meters already.

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Thank you @drsmithson are you willing to share what park size this was on ?

Great info .

Our park is 48 pads with 25 occupied.

Metron was also willing to ship us meters one or two at a time as we work on our infill so we didn’t have a box of unused meters lying around. Very helpful to us!

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I personally use SLC meter and have been very happy with them. The charge for their online meter reading service (run by Badger) is around $1.35 a month.

I haven’t tried Metreon yet and I’m sure they are good, but there are other options out there.

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As an fyi, this year we announced the release of our innov8 virtual network register the “VN” (our current registers are hourly reads and the VN captures 5-minute reads) for unparalleled leak detection - the most granular data in the industry.

Last week. Metron Sustainable Services announced our new website - take a look
(http://www.metronsubmetering.com)

Thanks for reading. -Stephanie

2020 UPDATE on SLC. We aren’t 100% happy with their service and meters. We will be looking at other options for our community. PM me if you’d like to hear more.

It seems like after a couple years everyone ends up hating the automation solutions and providers associated with them. I have Neptune meters that are completely manually read today and thinking that may not be such a bad thing.

I put off getting my Metron meters for yrs but now regret I didnt do it sooner. One of the big issues they omitted to tell me, that unless I replaced most all heat tapes they would be about a 1 1/2’ short. As the meter requires extra length and will need wrapped with the heat tape or it will freeze. And several did freeze and needed repaired. Bring this up early and budget for it. But being able to look at previous days usage over morning coffee is great.[providing no leaks that day]