I’m looking to have about 30 water meters installed at a property I own in Illinois about 40 minutes outside of Chicago. I would like meters that can be monitored remotely, although I do have local property management in place. So what are people using these days for high quality/decently priced water meters?
I can find my own person to do the installs if that’s a problem. Thank you.
Are you aware that Illinois state EPA requires you to register and be certified as a “water operator” if you submeter the public water supply and bill that to your residents? If not, I would suggest getting familiar with that requirement before proceeding.
Strangely, very few of the water sub-metering companies seem to be aware of (or care about) this requirement when they pitch you on their services.
If I had to replace my Metrons [which I wont for quite awhile hopefully] I would get the meters that have the temp sensor option. That way I would know when the heat tape is dead and my meter is about to freeze and break. Especially in upper midwest.
DO NOT USE METRON meters out of Boulder Colorado- I installed 56 of their best Remote ,
cellular read / temperature read meters in Sept 2020 and have had nothing but problems .
On any given day , 6- 10 meters don’t send a reading - and some don’t read at all - so try to bill tenants or get notified of leaks if you can’t read remotely- you cant do it. So Metron acknowledged their meters were faulty, flew a " tech" from Colorado to NY to fix , and as soon as he got to park he says " i only have 3 hours then i have to catch return flight …" What ? Buts that not best part- He can’t install the great fix ( high tech antenna ) because he forgot battery in Colorado . But even after they sent battery to us and my maint guy climbed pole to install, it still didnt fix problems - actually , 1 meter started working but 2 more didnt
So net loss , And the temperature read feature - that doesn’t work either - I remember another park owner saying he had problems with Metron too- i should have listened to him - AVOID Metron
I think the idea of this conversation is to talk about the abundance of options, @ChoiceGroup , would you please talk more about your knowledge of the options out there?
Thanks in advance.
Tony