Monitoring a city water meter

[apostolakisl]

I have been blessed with gigantic water bills the past 3 months because of two separate leaks in the yard line and a water utility that doesn't do anything when you start using more water every day than you normally use in a month.  I got a massive bill and went hunting, found the break just a few inches past the water meter buried in the pit at the street.  Fixed it promptly, but because the bill takes almost 2 weeks to deliver, I had another gigantic water bill.  OK, I figured it was over, then I get a third bill and it is still super high.  I find another leak buried 4 feet deep right before the water enters the house.  In short, I would like to monitor the flow at the city meter.  Anything inside the house would have been zero help.  I can find nothing to fit my needs.  My meter does not appear to have a pulse generator on it.  It is a "Master Meter", made in Israel model 5/8 BL.  It has an FCC tag on it which I assume is just for some short range radio that they pick up driving down the street . . . not sure.  It has no power, so any electricity would be generated by the flowing water.  I find nothing that I can install on the meter or on the pipe just past the meter in the pit.  I find devices that snap on the exterior of the pipe, but they all say for indoor use.  Plus the meter is a long ways from the house and there is no power there.  My wifi will probably just barely get there if I were to put an external antenna on it and mount it up in a tree next to the meter . . .I think.  Ideas?

[lilyoyo1]

24 minutes ago, apostolakisl said:

I have been blessed with gigantic water bills the past 3 months because of two separate leaks in the yard line and a water utility that doesn't do anything when you start using more water every day than you normally use in a month.  I got a massive bill and went hunting, found the break just a few inches past the water meter buried in the pit at the street.  Fixed it promptly, but because the bill takes almost 2 weeks to deliver, I had another gigantic water bill.  OK, I figured it was over, then I get a third bill and it is still super high.  I find another leak buried 4 feet deep right before the water enters the house.  In short, I would like to monitor the flow at the city meter.  Anything inside the house would have been zero help.  I can find nothing to fit my needs.  My meter does not appear to have a pulse generator on it.  It is a "Master Meter", made in Israel model 5/8 BL.  It has an FCC tag on it which I assume is just for some short range radio that they pick up driving down the street . . . not sure.  It has no power, so any electricity would be generated by the flowing water.  I find nothing that I can install on the meter or on the pipe just past the meter in the pit.  I find devices that snap on the exterior of the pipe, but they all say for indoor use.  Plus the meter is a long ways from the house and there is no power there.  My wifi will probably just barely get there if I were to put an external antenna on it and mount it up in a tree next to the meter . . .I think.  Ideas?

Would this work?

 

[Jimbo.Automates]

Flume works great, if you have a main water meter that they support. I had one and used it for for months to monitor water usage and send me notices thru the ISY if water was running to long, and no sprinklers were running. Using the Flume and Rachio nodeservers. But, my water company just replaced my meter and I don't think this new fancy one is supported. Check their website to see if yours is supported https://flumewater.com/

My little lake house doesn't have a water meter so I had a plumber install a Fortrezz
Z-Wave Flow Meter which works great as well but needs power.



Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

[apostolakisl]

@Jimbo @lilyoyo So I contacted Flume and they said my water meter may or may not work.  They said they would give my money back if it doesn't work, so I ordered it.  Thanks.  

[apostolakisl]

Can someone tell me wtf is going on here.  If you look at the photo, there is a T piece, then a 2 inch piece of "pex", connect to an elbow.  The leak was at the fitting where the 2 inch piece of "pex" enters the elbow.  I just cut out the piece today to replace it and discovered this is not pex.  It has a blue skin on it and under the skin was some sort of crumbling white powder substance and then an inner pipe.  If you look at the other blue "pex" pipe to where the copper continues, it is all lumpy, I assume more of this white stuff under the blue skin.  I have asked a professional plumber and he has no idea.  Has anyone seen anything like this?

[larryllix]

I believe this is dezincification. It was a big problem with some brands of PEX fitting for a few decades until they figured out what it was. The zinc in the bronze / brass fittings breaks down and disintegrates with certain aggressive water.

Later they changed all fittings to copper compounds that did not include Zinc. I have a few of them and they continually shed white powder. Many home sufferred damage due to flooding.

If you research it, the rumour mill online, mostly tells everybody the PEX was breaking down or gets clogged and the pressure builds up until the PEX bursts. Absolute hogwash as the pressure is governed by the source.

 

EDIT: Looking closer I don't see any metal there. Scrap that explanation.

Edited October 25, 2021 by larryllix

[apostolakisl]

38 minutes ago, larryllix said:

I believe this is dezincification. It was a big problem with some brands of PEX fitting for a few decades until they figured out what it was. The zinc in the bronze / brass fittings breaks down and disintegrates with certain aggressive water.

Later they changed all fittings to copper compounds that did not include Zinc. I have a few of them and they continually shed white powder. Many home sufferred damage due to flooding.

If you research it, the rumour mill online, mostly tells everybody the PEX was breaking down or gets clogged and the pressure builds up until the PEX bursts. Absolute hogwash as the pressure is governed by the source.

 

EDIT: Looking closer I don't see any metal there. Scrap that explanation.

Yes, I saw that, but the fitting wasn't corroding.  However, after starting to fix it, I noticed that it actually is not the pipe that failed (despite the ugliness of it), it was the fitting.  It appears that it was physically damaged as the one corner was dented in and adjacent to the dent there is a slice in the fitting (the elbow).  I assume the landscapers did it.  I have removed the fitting, but I am very concerned about trying to put a new fitting onto that crummy pipe.

Edited October 25, 2021 by apostolakisl

[KeviNH]

On 10/24/2021 at 9:19 PM, apostolakisl said:

  My meter does not appear to have a pulse generator on it.  It is a "Master Meter", made in Israel model 5/8 BL.  It has an FCC tag on it which I assume is just for some short range radio that they pick up driving down the street . . . not sure.  It has no power, so any electricity would be generated by the flowing water.  

I've been monitoring the "remote read" transmissions from several meters using the open source "rtlamr" project.    It uses a small $15 RTL-SDR radio receiver plugged into a computer or raspberry Pi.

[apostolakisl]

1 hour ago, KeviNH said:

I've been monitoring the "remote read" transmissions from several meters using the open source "rtlamr" project.    It uses a small $15 RTL-SDR radio receiver plugged into a computer or raspberry Pi.

Thanks for the info.  I already ordered the other device, but there is a chance it won't work.  I am quite certain my meter uses this or a similar system.  When the truck drives down the road, it triggers it to send the data is my guess.

 

Regarding my pipe.  I am pretty sure this is pex-al-pex.  Which is two layers of pex with aluminum in the middle.  The powder very much looks like oxydized aluminum.  I have grave concerns here as you might imagine.  I don't understand why it was used in this situation.  It appears pap is used mostly for radiant heat since it holds it shape through temp changes.  Don't know why it would be used for my yard line.

[larryllix]

6 hours ago, apostolakisl said:

Thanks for the info.  I already ordered the other device, but there is a chance it won't work.  I am quite certain my meter uses this or a similar system.  When the truck drives down the road, it triggers it to send the data is my guess.

 

Regarding my pipe.  I am pretty sure this is pex-al-pex.  Which is two layers of pex with aluminum in the middle.  The powder very much looks like oxydized aluminum.  I have grave concerns here as you might imagine.  I don't understand why it was used in this situation.  It appears pap is used mostly for radiant heat since it holds it shape through temp changes.  Don't know why it would be used for my yard line.

PEX-AL-PEX was my first thought also but the inner layer appeared to have some fibrous material in it, like fibreglass, and I don't see anybody putting aluminum in the ground with all the galvanic things that would eat it away.

I did a project using the PEX-AL-PEX pipe and it cannot take any compression fittings due to fracturing the AL layer, but always used a double O-ring seal and an outer gripping ring to resist longitudinal movement (apart).

[apostolakisl]

58 minutes ago, larryllix said:

PEX-AL-PEX was my first thought also but the inner layer appeared to have some fibrous material in it, like fibreglass, and I don't see anybody putting aluminum in the ground with all the galvanic things that would eat it away.

I did a project using the PEX-AL-PEX pipe and it cannot take any compression fittings due to fracturing the AL layer, but always used a double O-ring seal and an outer gripping ring to resist longitudinal movement (apart).

The inner layer isn't fibrous, it is just a different color of "plastic", presumably pex.  The fitting does have a double o-ring.  The fittings are not the same size as standard pex.  So this is now all complicated.  They were held to the fittings using a crimped copper ring, the same as standard pex, just a slightly different size and thus requiring a different tool.  The fittings have an ID of 1 inch, so I assume this means you also have to expand the ends of the pex-al-pex to go over the fitting.

Edited October 26, 2021 by apostolakisl

[Teken]

That sure looks to be a Uponor PEX fitting:

https://www.classaction.org/news/discontinued-red-blue-uponor-pex-piping-plagued-by-cracking-defect-class-action-alleges

[apostolakisl]

2 hours ago, Teken said:

That sure looks to be a Uponor PEX fitting:

https://www.classaction.org/news/discontinued-red-blue-uponor-pex-piping-plagued-by-cracking-defect-class-action-alleges

I found it is Kitec.  Lawsuit over this pipe.  Kitec is Pex-al-pex.  I guess the fittings and the aluminum create galvanic action that destroys either the fitting, the al, or both.  Looks like it is only my yard line.

 

Edited October 26, 2021 by apostolakisl

[Teken]

I found it is Kitec.  Lawsuit over this pipe.  Kitec is Pex-al-pex.  I guess the fittings and the aluminum create galvanic action that destroys either the fitting, the al, or both.  Looks like it is only my yard line.
 

What’s the story regarding this water pipe is it from the city or an add on for irrigation that you installed?

[apostolakisl]

37 minutes ago, Teken said:

What’s the story regarding this water pipe is it from the city or an add on for irrigation that you installed?

So the co that did our build in 2007 (the last year kitec was sold) is out of business.  I tracked down the plumber foreman on my job who now has his own co in the next town over and is too busy to travel.  But, he said that the practice was to run 2 1 inch yrad lines from the meter to the house and that he is 100% sure from the photos and his memory that it is kitec.  So basically, the whole yard line needs to be ripped out.  It switches to copper for the home entry but then back to pex.  I have cut open the 1/2 inch pex lines in the house to make some mods and they were definitely regular pex (no al).  I'm not sure about any of the larger lines.  Kitec is in class action lawsuit that is supposedly closed.  But we will go after that anyway.  We have talked to our insurance as well.  I'm sure the yard line alone will be at least $10k.  It is several hundred feet and will cut across the yard with septic lines, sprinkler lines, Hussqvarna lines, low voltage light lines, a driveway, and the of course landscaping.

[Teken]

So the co that did our build in 2007 (the last year kitec was sold) is out of business.  I tracked down the plumber foreman on my job who now has his own co in the next town over and is too busy to travel.  But, he said that the practice was to run 2 1 inch yrad lines from the meter to the house and that he is 100% sure from the photos and his memory that it is kitec.  So basically, the whole yard line needs to be ripped out.  It switches to copper for the home entry but then back to pex.  I have cut open the 1/2 inch pex lines in the house to make some mods and they were definitely regular pex (no al).  I'm not sure about any of the larger lines.  Kitec is in class action lawsuit that is supposedly closed.  But we will go after that anyway.  We have talked to our insurance as well.  I'm sure the yard line alone will be at least $10k.  It is several hundred feet and will cut across the yard with septic lines, sprinkler lines, Hussqvarna lines, low voltage light lines, a driveway, and the of course landscaping.

You had mentioned you believe the original leak was caused by the gardener?!? What was happening at that point a new tree being planted?

I know you live in Texas so temperatures are warmer than cold. But is that line really only 18-24” deep under the ground?!?

[larryllix]

1 hour ago, apostolakisl said:

I found it is Kitec.  Lawsuit over this pipe.  Kitec is Pex-al-pex.  I guess the fittings and the aluminum create galvanic action that destroys either the fitting, the al, or both.  Looks like it is only my yard line.

 

Yeah, I find no fittings for this pipe anymore at homedepot.ca. I have an attic full of it that ran my solar hot water heating scheme in the attic. I could muster up one gate style valve and a few feet of the pipe I will be removing, but all just in 1/2".  I just remember the fitting and adapters to other styles were damn expensive with the double O rings and grabber rings. They looked very similar to the shark-bite style fittings available now. I ended up getting a few bucks for a wheelbarrow full of fittings...and good riddance.

If you could find a plumbing shop with some old stock and/adapters it could work with a sealing bag full of silicone grease around the joints buried back in the ground. Comm line connections are done that way with their won ooze-out gunk in the crimps. It may worth a try instead of the long trench through other services. May be good for 40-50 years. Never know.

IIRC people were trying to sue Kitec for the PEX-AL-PIPE but it was the fitting that were breaking down from dezincification, not the interaction of metals. The AL doesn't touch any fitting metal with the connections anyway. People with flooded homes were going crazy trying to sue everybody for everything and didn't know what was causing the breakdowns. Later it was discovered a certain breed and era of fitting were the cuplrits so my guess is that class action suit is defunct and not progressing.

Uponor (formerly Wirsbo) only made all PEX pipe and used a heat shrunk ring to tighten the pipe to their barbed fittings. Users had to take their training courses and the crimper/stretcher was $800. They didn't want home owners to install their own pipe. Now the cheap white stuff at HD is so easy to use, I plumbed my house with it. Stainless steel rings are cheap and easy to get off again and the crimper was about $20.

You cannot mix systems from years back, They all used a different crimping/sealing systems. You also cannot crimp fit PEX-AL-PEX pipe. It beaks the aluminum. That may be what happened to yours and then the galvanic action from the soil acids rotted it.

[apostolakisl]

1 hour ago, Teken said:

You had mentioned you believe the original leak was caused by the gardener?!? What was happening at that point a new tree being planted?

I know you live in Texas so temperatures are warmer than cold. But is that line really only 18-24” deep under the ground?!?

I'm guessing the dent in the fitting was caused during backfilling our something along those lines but only weakened the fitting and that the corrosion finished it off.  But it can't be repaired because the pipe is turning into powder.  Cutting it back and putting new fittings would not go well.  Perhaps I can do something just to get the water back on again temporarily until such time that the proper fix can be done.  Getting a good seal with the pipe as it is just isn't going to go well and would likely not last very long.  And there is no way the pipe froze.  This particular location is 4 feet deep.  And yes, I dug that stinkin hole myself Sunday morning.  We had a record breaking week of 6 degree weather last winter and never lost water flow.  Generally we only have a few nights of freezing weather each winter.  2 winters ago my annuals planted next to the house didn't even die.

[apostolakisl]

I dug up my pre-drywall photos of the house and went into the attic where pipe was exposed and it appears the kitec was limited to the yard line.  

[larryllix]

2 hours ago, apostolakisl said:

I dug up my pre-drywall photos of the house and went into the attic where pipe was exposed and it appears the kitec was limited to the yard line.  

I don't think it was ever proper to do any connectors in the ground like that, especially with bare copper fittings. Dissimilar metals shouldn't have been exposed to soil either.

If you do retrench it you could install a 4" Big-O pipe and pull the PEX through it possibly with any signal cables you may want later (fibre optic?)

[hart2hart]

Flume works great, if you have a main water meter that they support. I had one and used it for for months to monitor water usage and send me notices thru the ISY if water was running to long, and no sprinklers were running. Using the Flume and Rachio nodeservers. But, my water company just replaced my meter and I don't think this new fancy one is supported. Check their website to see if yours is supported https://flumewater.com/

My little lake house doesn't have a water meter so I had a plumber install a Fortrezz
Z-Wave Flow Meter which works great as well but needs power.



Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

I’m very interested in your Flume solution. Would you be willing to share programs you used from the two nodeservers.

[apostolakisl]

14 hours ago, larryllix said:

I don't think it was ever proper to do any connectors in the ground like that, especially with bare copper fittings. Dissimilar metals shouldn't have been exposed to soil either.

If you do retrench it you could install a 4" Big-O pipe and pull the PEX through it possibly with any signal cables you may want later (fibre optic?)

I don't know for certain here, Kitec is discontinued and it is hard to find installation manual, though I did find that it was approved for direct burial.  Bare copper is definitely safe to bury.  There are lots of hundred plus year old buildings with buried copper lines in the yard that continue to work great.  But the aluminum and perhaps aluminum in contact with copper and brass may be the issue?  I can tell you my Husqvarna automower came with aluminum guide wire and that has pretty much turned into white powder as well.  I've replaced at least half of it.  The areas where the wire is on the surface has not turned to powder, it is only the buried wire.  It is my plan to replace the entire thing with copper wire this winter.  Aluminum doesn't seem to do well around here at all.  The soil (if you can call it that) is very alkaline.  Caliche and limestone.  Perhaps something to do with that.

I'm going to look into horizontal drilling.  Not sure how that is going to price out vs trenching and doing all the repairs.  Certainly the horizontal drilling will be much cleaner and easy to place very deep and out of harms way.  I live on something of a bluff at the street, so they could just go straight into the side and run it 5 or 10 feet deep nearly to the house before turning up.  I'll ask about putting it in conduit vs direct burial.  Obviously the pipe would be protected and replaceable if in conduit.  Plus if I wanted to run some low voltage or data wire in there I can.  

For now just enjoying a nice Sulphur aroma with my morning shower (well water).

[larryllix]

1 hour ago, apostolakisl said:

I don't know for certain here, Kitec is discontinued and it is hard to find installation manual, though I did find that it was approved for direct burial.  Bare copper is definitely safe to bury.  There are lots of hundred plus year old buildings with buried copper lines in the yard that continue to work great.  But the aluminum and perhaps aluminum in contact with copper and brass may be the issue?  I can tell you my Husqvarna automower came with aluminum guide wire and that has pretty much turned into white powder as well.  I've replaced at least half of it.  The areas where the wire is on the surface has not turned to powder, it is only the buried wire.  It is my plan to replace the entire thing with copper wire this winter.  Aluminum doesn't seem to do well around here at all.  The soil (if you can call it that) is very alkaline.  Caliche and limestone.  Perhaps something to do with that.

I'm going to look into horizontal drilling.  Not sure how that is going to price out vs trenching and doing all the repairs.  Certainly the horizontal drilling will be much cleaner and easy to place very deep and out of harms way.  I live on something of a bluff at the street, so they could just go straight into the side and run it 5 or 10 feet deep nearly to the house before turning up.  I'll ask about putting it in conduit vs direct burial.  Obviously the pipe would be protected and replaceable if in conduit.  Plus if I wanted to run some low voltage or data wire in there I can.  

For now just enjoying a nice Sulphur aroma with my morning shower (well water).

I found two different tyles of PEX-AL-PEX fittings.

The first one is what you appear to have. I have not seen his brand/type before.
https://mrpexsystems.com/online-catalog/radiant-pex-al-pex-fittings/

These are the style I was using with HD pipe.
https://www.pexuniverse.com/pex-al-pex-compression-fittings

I would be tempted to dig them back some, clean up the pipe and square off,  check for other disintegration (of course), install a couple of adapters to a better brand of PEX. Wrap the whole thing in a plastic bag/shell, seal the best you can, fill it with some grease, give it a few days, and bury it again.

For a sealed afair, heat shrink full of grease comes to mind. Then shink it with heat and let the grease ooze out for a water seal, and galvanic resistance.

Last minute thoughts. You may some PEX between the AL stuff and the copper to prevent the battery (galvanic) action created by contact. Also sand pad or some granular material, the pipe before putting top soil. If there is any shifting, it will allow it to flow around the pipe and not pull it apart. It also makes it a lot easier to dig up, if necessary later, with a soft surround material.

Edited October 27, 2021 by larryllix

[LFMc]

On 10/24/2021 at 8:19 PM, apostolakisl said:

I have been blessed with gigantic water bills the past 3 months because of two separate leaks

I had an under foundation leak that drove up my bill, to add to the issue it was a hot water line. I noticed my gas HW heater was cycling a LOT when I was in my garage and could hear it. I found the hot spot  in the floor of my home with an IR laser thermometer.  

All that to say is the city I live in worked with me on the water bill. I gave them proof of damage and repair and they averaged out my bill for that month and gave me a refund.  Sometimes it might take a letter or repair bill from a plumber. Of course cities may vary, but it is worth a try.  Unfortunately I couldn't get a refund on the excess natural gas.  

Good luck on the monitoring solution. 

[apostolakisl]

I installed the Flume today.  Appears to work.  I had to move the base station to a window on the side of the house closest to the meter.  I haven't put the metal cap back on the meter yet, hopefully it continues to work.  I have a Master Meter.  

@Jimbo  The Flume appears to be a web based service, correct?  There is no direct connection to the hub, only connecting to the Flume server?