Our water bill for January was 900. I thought that may be a problem since it should be around 40 bucks per month. There is about 1800 feet of water line from the road meter to the house. That's around a third of a mile. It's a challange finding a water leak when your water line is buried but I unsuccessfully did. I had no choice but to start looking, (digging). I really didn't want to start a winter water project but we couldn't go without water. I did find a leak and fixed it in Jan. however, I found a leak but not "the" leak. Febuary's water bill was 600. OK. great. I have spent mega bucks on backhoes and used several days vacation only to be left with 1500+ for a water bill and still a leak. Not good. I had two choices left. One, was to dig a new water line through my neighbors yard. That would cost about 1500 bucks. It didn't seem too unreasonable since that's equivelant to around two month's of water bills but it wasn't my first choice. Second, I could gamble with possibly using water line number two. That's right, when my house was built the original owner put two pipes in the same ditch. One was my water and the other was a spare in case another house was built close to mine. The only issue I had was its' dependability. It could be as bad as my original. So I spent all weekend without water and made the change to the spare water line. It's been two weeks and so far all is well. No leaks and good water pressure. I hope my next months water bill is a little more like 50 dollars. The water dept. now knows me on a first name basis. We may not have water again but it's only because I can't pay the bill. They did tell me I can pay it over time. So even though my water bill may be normal, my payment for the next year will continue to be over 100 per month. There will be no water pool parties this summer.
