George,

Last weekend, I took 7 years of water bills and charted our use to celebrate how much we had improved through our very conscious efforts of recent months. The results were chilling. We hadn't made nearly the progress that I expected. After puzzling for the past week or so why this might be, today I shut off our water at the main cut-off in the basement and found that the water meter in the back yard kept running. I called the city and they dispatched someone to investigate.

In the next hour, while waiting for the service call, I tracked the "use" and discovered that we were "using" water at the rate of 60 gallons per day (around 250 cubic feet per month!).

The city's very helpful Public Service staff member confirmed my guess that we have a leak somewhere in the 30 feet between the meter and the house. He turned off the water at the meter and I made a call to one of the local plumbers. Hopefully we can get this resolved quickly (although I am certain, not inexpensively).

Unlike in the future we all hope will not come to pass, I can (and will) turn the water on for essential activities while we wait to resolve this situation.

This simple test turned out to have been very valuable. I would recommend it to your readers.

Russell Perry (electronic mail, September 21, 2002)