Is it worth it to get a master meter if you already have meters at every home?
Does anyone have a Metron master meter?
I’ve considered doing this as my individual meters are inside each home, so I wanted to catch leaks if they occurred under the home and/or underground. My issue was that there was not enough space to add the metron meter with the city’s meter inside the same pit. Became cost prohibitive as I would have needed to add a new meter pit (x3 since I have 3 city meters) to add the metron master.
Are you taking readings off the City master meter? If not you definitely need to piggyback off of it for your daily reading to compare your total usage of the residents meters.
I do have one. In my opinion, its not worth it. You can get the same information by analyzing utility bills, how much you spend vs how much you collect.
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We recently installed ultrasound water meters on every home and last week installed a Water Signal meter (now owned by Metron) on the main line coming into the park. I am analyzing the gap between the two in daily usage - is it a calibration issue, or is there a leak in the park?
The Water Signal meter shows the water usage at any hour of the day. WS estimates that the usage should be less than 3 gallons per home at 3 a.m. If it’s higher, it indicates a leak. That is not information we can glean from a quarterly reading. It would take my manager going down into the water meter pit in the middle of the night to get these readings.
So, now I have about a week’s worth of readings from WS, which shows that all night long, each resident is using about 1-2 gallons. Hmmmm… that is below what Water Signal indicates as a leak, however, the usage is consistent all night long.
Last fall we did have a leak in the park, and the bill was significantly more than the cost of the WS meter and the monthly fee for several years! If you do have a leak, unless the water company calls you, you won’t know until you get the bill. So it is valuable info for us now. Our park was started in 1960 by my father and the infrastructure is working pretty well, however we are doing updates.
Anyway, I am just beginning this process and will weigh back in once I know and understand more.
I have what’s called a duplexer on a city meter at one of my parks. it sends the reads from the city digital meter that can then be compared to the sum of the individual meters. cheaper than installing a new Metron master meter in parallel with the city’s and sometimes the city won’t allow that. On another park, the city has given me access to their software…(the use the Badger system). Cities upgrading meters to digitally read seems to be a trend. Most of the time its not needed but can be an early indicator of leaks.
My problem has been that I have had leaks in my main line. I don’t know about them until I get the bill. My water usage has been fine wor 6 months but I live in fear of major breaks in the main line.
I don’t have access to the city meter. I have a master meter but my manager is old and can’t pull the cover off and read the meter. Would just be easier to get the readings myself.
I was just curious if anyone else on the forum has done this.
I would recommend the master meter for your own sanity. If it can’t be installed then have someone read the city meter a few times a week. If you have a bunch of leaks consider putting on individual roads to make it easier for hunting leaks.
I did install this, and I don’t find it particularly useful. Can just use the bills to find the same information.
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We installed Metron meters in our main park seven or eight years ago and find it very useful. We do not bill for water but own most of the homes in our park and use as full rentals. We use the meters to monitor water usage (excessive watering) and to identify water leaks in the homes. Nothing worse than replacing a sub floor because a tenant thought the leak would go away by itself. For that purpose it has been very effective and worth the cost.
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I use to do that method, never again! Master meter duplex and individual meters only way to catch leaks. Not a bill that comes next month.
However, if you ever do have a leak in the main, you might not find out about it until the next bill comes. That happened to us and cost enough to pay for a digital meter for several years.
asmith Im not sure you understand. I can wake up every morning and look at total of the individual meter usages and my master meter usage. I know then that day of a BIG leak.