WATER METER SENDING UNIT • That rubber thing in the center of your water meater is a tranceiver that enables the water department to read your water use with out opening the meter box. Several have been damabed since installtion and the City Council is trying to figure out who is going to pay repair costs.
By Myrna Trauntvein
Times-News Correspondent
Those expensive “eyes” on top of water meters in the yard are being damaged by homeowners and the question is: Who should pay for replacements?
Justin Blackett, city water superintendent, brought some of the damaged equipment to city council meeting to show the types of damage being done.
“The one-inch meter and the three-quarter inch meter have the same cost,” said Blackett. “It costs $160 to repair the device.”
“The question is: Who should pay?” he said.
The Meter Transceiver Unit (MXU) is a radio signal device which permits off-site meter reading via radio signals. The MXU interfaces compatible absolute encoder equipped utility meter with an interrogation device.
The MXU is designed for meter installations to provide safe, off-site meter reading. When interfaced with an absolute encoder, meter reading is virtually error free.
“The attachment sits up a half-inch or more above the top of the meter cover,” said Blackett. “They are being damaged by homeowners pushing snow or running lawn mowers over them.”
Repairing the damaged MXU will depend on what is wrong, he said. Some are damaged beyond repair and need to be replaced. Some of the meters, attached inside the meter casing via a long electric cord, are just unplugged.
“When they are plugged back in, they work again,” Blackett said. “The MXU then catches up to the time it was unplugged. All that does is delay the charge for use of the utility.”
In some cases, he said, the MXU could be repaired by placing it in a new casing.
“We are trying to see if we could order just the casing,” Blackett said.
At the county fairgrounds, the damaged wires were spliced to see if that would work and save a more costly repair. The MXU was reading but it remained to be seen if that would be a long-time repair or a temporary one.
However, in some cases, the sensor is ruined.
When it is necessary to replace the entire unit, it does cost $160 per unit.
Blackett said that there were a number of units that needed to be replaced. As for labor costs, he said, a meter could be changed in approximately 15 minutes.
“Summer and winter we can pull up a monthly report,” he said. “We will have a audit this month.”
The report does show which meters are not working. Any errors or nonreads are immediately indicated on the meter reading equipment. This information can also be generated on management reports when the data is downloaded at the end of the reading cycle. In addition, high/low reading parameters can also be verified during the meter reading process.
The automatic reading system eliminates a number of meter reading problems such as lockouts, “curb side” reading estimates, estimated billing and errors associated with manual meter reading methods.
“The purpose of the automatic reading was, over time, to save the city money,” said Mark Jones, mayor. “There will not be the same positive result if the readers are broken and we have to send people out to repair them.”
“There are many people who help out their neighbors by pushing their snow in the wintertime,” Blackett said. “They don’t know where the meter is and accidentally hit it.”
“Perhaps our first effort may be one of education,” said Jones. “When people go to push their neighbors snow or mow their lawn they should locate the meter before hand.”
Blackett said he needed to know what the city council would like done. They would need to make a decision on whether the new unit should be charged to the homeowner, whether the city would pick up the tab or whether there should be a blanket monthly charge applied to all water utility users.
“Do you want to put a monthly assessment on each bill—say 50-cents or 25-cents—which would pay for the repair?” asked Blackett.
Don Ball, resident, suggested the city might put an educational insert into the monthly utility bill so that residents would locate the meter and know about the sensor.
Then when residents were working in the yard, they would be aware of the damage that could be done to the sensor.
“I think those who damage the unit should be charged a $10 a month fee until the equipment is paid for,” said Ball.
Robert Painter, council member, said it bothered him that some may have altered the equipment on purpose. In such cases, he said, he thought that a law enforcement officer should be called to cite the homeowner.
Blackett said that a couple of the meters which were not working had wires mashed. In those cases, the damage could have been prevented had the homeowner followed the city’s regulations.
City workers should be called to the home to turn the water off.
When a plumber is called to the home, for example to install a new water heater, the plumber should be asked to install a shut-off valve in the house. That means that a homeowner will not have to lift the meter cover to reach the shut-off valve.
“I have pulled up my meter cover,” said Brent Bowles, council member. “There is enough slack on the wire, if care is taken, that it shouldn’t come unplugged.”
Anyone lifting the cover also needed to be aware that the wires needed to be tucked back before the cover was replaced.
