Water meter replacement program starts in fall
The first phase of a city-wide water meter replacement program is expected to start this fall, says director of municipal works Geoff Holman.
About $4 million was included in the city’s 2017 capital budget for the project.
Holman said phase one will target “high-volume” accounts first because “that’s where our largest risk is for unaccounted water consumption.”
He said replacing every meter in the city would cost around $10 million.
“We are moving ahead with implementation of new radio-read water meters in … new subdivisions.”
Holman said the traditional method involved installing a water meter and connecting a wire to the meter head that connected to a device located outside the home. That method allows a meter reader to obtain a reading without having to access the home.
“This has proven to be problematic. The new technology thats been implemented successfully in places like Welland and St. Catharines involves the installation of a water meter that has radio-read technology,” he said.
“We have this equipment that allows us to pick up the reading … without having to access the actual water meter itself by radio technology.”
Holman said staff is still working out certain details of the program, including the roll out.
“We want to look at those water meters that deal with higher volume consumption, so our larger water meters, we want to deal with those first because we think those are the areas where we’re most prone to inaccurate readings.”
He said with the new radio-read meters the city will be able to determine “where we’re losing water from our system more quickly and be able to respond.”
“For example, if residential homeowners don’t know they have a water leak issue until they get their water bill, we’ll be able to access that information without having to get inside their home and we can notify them that perhaps a toilet’s running or the hose is left on or there’s some other high-volume consumption that’s not normal compared to previous readings.”
Holman said the city has already implemented the technology in new subdivisions and when they replace deficient meters.
“We’ll be probably targetting the fall for the installation on existing accounts.”
Mayor Jim Diodati said he supports the program because the city has seen an increasing number of malfunctioning meters.
“We also sometimes have unexplained water losses. There’s lots of reasons why you lose water, everything from cracked infrastructure to faulty meters,” he said.
Diodati said he has heard from people who did not know their water meter had broken down, or that they had a broken main, until they got a “massive” water bill.
“By the time we detect it, a month has gone by and it’s amazing how much volume can go through a leaky toilet or a cracked water main.”
Diodati said meters have a projected lifespan and it’s time the city takes advantage of “better” tracking and reading technology.
“There comes a point that it makes more sense just to plan for their replacement rather than waiting for them to break down.”
He said the new meters can be programmed to send notifications.
“We’ll have built-in restrictions in place and when it goes beyond a period, like say (a resident is) filling their pool or something like that, we’ll know and we’ll be able to call them and say, ‘hey, listen, your water meter is showing that you’ve got massive volumes.’ It’s a way we can be proactive. Every big problem starts as a small problem, so if you can catch it when it’s a small problem, it’s a lot easier to deal with than waiting for it to be a big problem.”