Senile Texas Aggie - comic relief for the rest of you

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

Can you install another meter along the waterline, maybe after the first hay zone. That way you can track how much water that field uses and narrow down where water issues might be located?

 

[Bruce]

We are both getting close to each earning a Zinger™ award!

Nah, one needs to do something quite stupid to get a Zinger™ award. Silly things or things you can't really know about are, at most, worth a DOH! You can't fix something before it causes trouble if you don't know it is broken.

The water meter is at the road, 1/2 mile from the house, so it should register any water leaking anywhere along the 1/2 pipe.

OK, then I would call the water company and see if they would be willing to read the meter twice in one day a few hours apart when you can choose to use no water at all. And if you have a shutoff in that line at the house before it branches elsewhere, shut off that valve. If there is ANY change in the meter you know it is in that 1/2 mile pipe

How much water was on your last bill and what do you think would have been a reasonable amount based on prior usage? Also, is it a monthly read or quarterly? A "not all that big" leak over a 3 month period might not register much in a few hours.

Also, given you undoubtedly have a really shallow frost depth (if any), how deep would the pipe be buried? Like @CntryBoy777 said, there would likely be wet areas near the leak if the pipe is only maybe 18" down. Here they need to be 4', lots of places for water to go rather than show at the surface.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

I decided to go back and look at our water usage since we moved in back in May 2018. Here is how it turned out:

Date​	usage​	amount​
2018-May-24​	3100​	$35.26​
2018-Jun-25​	3300​	$36.38​
2018-Jul-20​	3300​	$38.73​
2018-Aug-21​	3200​	$39.40​
2018-Sep-20​	3200​	$39.40​
2018-Oct-22​	3300​	$40.02​
2018-Nov-19​	3100​	$38.79​
Dec 2018 through Mar 2019 data missing​	​	​
2019-Apr-22​	3300​	$40.02​
May 2019 through Jul 2019 data missing​	​	​
2019-Aug-26​	2600​	$35.71​
2019-Sep-25​	3600​	$41.87​
2019-Oct-21​	4600​	$48.03​
2019-Nov-26​	11900​	$87.60​
2019-Dec-26​	8900​	$72.37​
2020-Jan-25​	4000​	$44.33​
2020-Feb-26​	91400​	$489.87​
Mar 2020 data missing​	​	​
2020-Apr-21​	12900​	$92.66​

It was in Feb 2020 when I repaired the plumbing. I really wish I could find the Mar 2020 water bill, as that would help me have a better idea if the water usage was back to normal (~ 4000 gals) or was more like April's. Until I receive May 2020 bill in a few days I will assume (<= dangerous word) that there is no leak anywhere.

When I checked this morning, the water level in the 2 holes I dug was quite low. I concluded that water was NOT leaking from the plumbing work I did in February. I decided to fill the holes back in, this time using only sand. That will make it easier to dig them up should they really be leaking.

This morning my Beautiful Gal and I went to the southern pond to start cleaning off the dam from overgrowth. Dummy me forgot to take "before" pictures. But we still have A LOT more work to do, so I will take some pictures soon.

Senile Texas Aggie

 

[Bruce]

You could probably call the water dept and ask what your usage was on the last bill. If back to normal if not you want to figure out where all that water you are paying for is leaking out so you can stop paying for water you are not getting any benefit from.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

We will be getting May's water bill soon, so I will check it to see what our usage is. If it is above normal, then I will talk to the water company about trying to locate the leak. I have a suspicion where it might be. The problem is that I don't know EXACTLY where the water line is. I believe it follows the driveway from the road, crosses the creek over the culvert, and then starts veering away from the driveway towards the house. I can see in the pasture where the line was dug, from the edge of the pasture next to the house down toward the creek. But past that point the line is no longer visible in the grass. But I suspect that if the line is leaking, it is near a tree on the other side of the creek. The pasture to the east of that tree often stays wet. I haven't suspected the water line, as that area receives a good bit of water from the creek whenever the creek overflows. But if the water bill is higher than normal and the water company won't look for the leak on private property, I may decide to rent a mini excavator and do some exploring of my own.

 

[CntryBoy777]

They may not look for the leak, itself, but should mark the path the waterline takes to the house....even if a small fee is required to do so...it surely would be cheaper than renting a piece of equipment to "hunt and peck" out the path....

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

Do you know if it's a PVC pipe or metal for the water supply? If metal a plumber should be able to trace it easily. If PVC might have to get more creative to track it. Sometimes PVC pipes are buried with tracing wire in the trench so they can be found with metal detector, but older pipes might not have that.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

They may not look for the leak, itself, but should mark the path the waterline takes to the house....even if a small fee is required to do so...it surely would be cheaper than renting a piece of equipment to "hunt and peck" out the path....

I will certainly contact them before I rent a mini-excavator. If it is a reasonable amount, then I will have them tract the line if they can.

Do you know if it's a PVC pipe or metal for the water supply? ,,, Sometimes PVC pipes are buried with tracing wire in the trench so they can be found with metal detector, but older pipes might not have that.

I don't remember noticing what the water line is at the meter, but near the house the line is PVC. If there is a tracing wire, that would be great! That way I could more easily dig near it before I rip it out the way I did at the house back in February. As soon as the water bill arrives, I will have a better idea if there is a problem.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

Well, I am an idiot! (What else is new?) What makes me say this now is because of what I did or didn't do until yesterday. Yesterday my Beautiful Gal and I decided to go to the mail box to see if the water bill had arrived on Saturday. It had not. But I decided to see if there was a way to read something on the meter's wireless transmitter to give an indication of how much water has been used. When I removed the water meter cover plate, this time I reached down to what I thought was the wireless transmitter. It turned out to be merely a cover plate with a hinge on one end. Flipping the cover plate away, there was a mechanical water meter! There never had been a wireless transmitter!

There was a small triangle in the center of the meter that was going around. I took that to indicate that water was flowing through the meter. Leaving my Beautiful Gal there to watch the small triangle, I drove to the house to cut off the water at the house. When I went back to the gate, my Beautiful Gal reported that there had been no change in the rate of flow. So we wrote down the number at meter and came back home. Consulting last month's bill, we determined that we had used just under 20,000 gallons in one month! So there definitely is a leak somewhere! I will be calling the water department tomorrow to see if they can trace the water line for me.

Now for another issue I am facing -- the erosion of the driveway. On the way back to the house I took some pictures of the driveway near the creek. After a heavy rain the creek often overflows its banks on the side of the driveway, washing away the gravel on the driveway.

This is looking south from the gate down into the low lying area next to the creek. The ground slopes away from the viewer, and then from right to left. The creek is to the right:

This is farther down the driveway, where the erosion starts:

This is at the curve looking back toward the gate where the erosion ends:

What would you folks recommend I do to prevent the erosion of the driveway?

Back to the water line, this is a picture of the tree where I suspect the water may be leaking:

This is the view from the porch back toward the creek. The thin darker green line going through the pasture is where I suspect the water line is buried:

Senile Texas Aggie

 

[Bruce]

There never had been a wireless transmitter!

But hey, wireless transmitters are really common now, saves the water company a ton of money not having people go record the readings by hand. How were you to know? At least now you know you can check it ... and sadly that there IS a leak in that 1/2 mile line.

What would you folks recommend I do to prevent the erosion of the driveway?

Um, dig the creek deeper? I ASSUME that the water doesn't really have anywhere to go once it crosses the road so I don't guess a culvert would be of any use unless there was a normally dry pond on the other side. Could you maybe make a berm (or a ditch? ) on the creek side of the road long enough and high (low) enough to keep the water from washing over the road until the road is higher than where the water would be when it floods? The only other idea I have (and I've NEVER had to deal with such things) would be to raise the road.

The thin darker green line going through the pasture is where I suspect the water line is buried

Seems reasonable that the plant life would be healthier where there is more water. Might be a good place to start looking, hopefully the water dept has a method to pinpoint the leak (and HOPEFULLY it is only a single leak). Is there a shut off at the meter? I ASSUME there is. You might want to be prepared to turn it off fast if you get close to the leak and all of a sudden the lack of dirt around the pipe lets it spew with force.