How To Check If Your Water Meter Is Faulty

Suspect your water meter box is broken? Here’s how you’ll be able to tell and how you can fix it

Checking your water bill is a universally loathed experience, but at least it’s predictable.

However, maybe you’ve opened a statement this month to find that your bill has skyrocketed.

While this might be down to the ever-increasing cost of living in the UK, if it’s abnormally high with no reasonable explanation, then there could be a problem with your water meter box.

While they hardly ever go wrong, it is possible – so do you know if your water meter is on the blink?

In this post, our experts here at Total Pipeline Systems walk you through the most common ways you can check.

Turn off your water

If you’ve been getting some strangely high water meter readings, one possible cause could be a leak.

Turning off your water is one of the easiest ways to check for this issue.

You don’t need to switch it off at the mains, you just need to ensure that no toilets are flushing, no taps are running, and that nobody is taking one of their legendary 45-minute showers.

If you can confirm that no water is running and your water meter is still showing that water is flowing via its little red needle, you likely have a leak somewhere.

Inspect in and around your home to narrow down the location of the leak – starting with any exposed water pipes, moving on to look closely at your walls, floors, and ceilings.

Also, keep an eye out for underground pipe leaks in your garden, looking for muddy spots when the water has been dry, or patches of grass that are greener than the rest of your lawn.

Do a bucket test

If there’s no indication of a leak anywhere, do a bucket test to check the meter accuracy.

Again, ensure nobody is using water anywhere in the house while you run the experiment, and write down the exact reading on the meter.

Water meters can be measured in gallons or cubic feet, but it’s usually the latter in the UK – which is important to note.

One gallon is equal to about 0.133 or 0.134 cubic feet.

If you fill a 1-gallon bucket with water, and water is being used nowhere else, your meter should go up by this amount.

To make it easier to read, fill a 5-gallon bucket three times over, to use 15 gallons of water – and your meter reading should’ve gone up by two.

If the meter moves as you expect it to, it’s more than likely working correctly – but if not, the problem could be with the meter itself.

Need a replacement water meter box?

If your water meter is on the blink, maybe it’s time to consider replacing your old box.

Here at Total Pipeline Systems, we supply a wide range of Plasson water meter boxes, mounts, connectors, and kits.

If you need help selecting a suitable water meter box and the appropriate fittings, we’re available to offer expert product advice Monday to Friday, from 8:30 am to 5 pm.

Give us a call on 01254 382 000 to speak to our team directly, or send us an email at sales@totalpipes.co.uk and we’ll be in touch as soon as we can.