There are several ways to lower your water bill. One is conservation, or simply using less water. Another way to lower your water bill is to make sure the cost of the water is low, so the user’s bill remains low. (More on that in a future post). But one topic almost rarely gets covered. Leaks.
Most of the meters in Santa Clara County are old-school mechanical meters. However, it seems San Jose Water has approval to update our meters to newer, digital ones. I can find no information on the wider rollout of newer meters. If you know anything about this, please comment below.
A couple of years back, my water bill was kept going up, and I could not figure out why. At the time I was mostly living alone, as this was during the pandemic. My daughters were in college or away working. I could not find any obvious leaks. Like the good nerd that I am, I looked to technology for answers. I found Flume.
For the record: this is not a product review. I’m merely relaying my experience with one of the commercial products. It worked for me, but your mileage may vary.
About Flume
Flume is a box you attach to your water meter, a wireless bridge, and an app on your phone. I have had mine for about 2 years. The installation is very simple. You strap the box to your water meter at the street level, and connect it to the gateway. The gateway is a box I have sitting on my window sill, and it bridges between the device and my wifi network. Finally, You use the app to connect your gateway to your home’s Wi-Fi.
Science Fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Flume is like this. When you install the box, you strap it to your mechanical water meter. Somehow it figures out how your water is flowing through a meter just by being strapped to it. It’s magic. It seems to accurate +/- 5%. However, the measurement of water used indoor vs. outdoor is not accurate, since I don’t use water outdoors generally.
My Experience with Flume
I let it run for a day, and it told me it was likely a leak from a toilet. And it was correct. I isolated the toilet that was leaking and called my friend Mike The Plumber. Mike fixed it quickly. My water usage dropped by half the next month.
Flume also has decent analytics. It will allow you to graph water use by the minute(!), hour, day, week and month. If you like line and bar graphs, you’ll love this app. The notifications are great too. The flume app will tell you on days when you are using more than the normal amount of water. It will also email you as well. You get to choose. I find this super helpful.
In summary, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. This is something I live by in my personal and professional life. Flume helps me with managing my water usage. It also helps me lower my water bills as well. In my view, this only strengthens the need for smart water meters. It is also a great conservation tool. If you have questions, contact me here.
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