I am facing a one-month water bill for $1,800 on a vacant house. It's the result of winter freezes that broke -- not my pipes -- but the Water Company meter installed in my basement. I'm hoping that someone here has seen (or, hopefully not, experienced) a similar catastrophe and can tell me how the issue was resolved.
Background: I live in California. When my mother passed away two years ago, she left me our first family home, a small two-bedroom cottage in New England. I visited the house last summer and, when I left, closed all the valves on water pipes leading from the meter in my basement to other parts of the house.
Late this spring, I received an emergency call from the Water Company. The caller said my most recent meter reading was very high, and a supervisor who went to check my (vacant) house heard water running inside. He shut down the street supply and told his company to notify me in California.
I called a next-door neighbor who had the key to my place; and he went inside with the Water Company supervisor to take a look. In the basement where the water meter was mounted (an underground, cinder-block constructed partial basement about 15 x 25'), there was about a half-inch of standing water. The neighbor, the Water Company supervisor, and a handyman I hired to vacuum out the water, all say they saw no signs that the basement had been flooded above that 1/2" level.
Despite this, the Water Company says my vacant house used 385,000 gallons of water in the month prior to the leak discovery. The rep says a "freeze plate" on the water meter broke, and that was the source of my $1,800 leak.
This leads to several questions that I hope anyone who's read this far can help me with.
Is it possible for 385,000 gallons of water, in an 15 x 25' chamber with =no= history of dampness from the outside, to simply disappear? (Again, there were no water-marks on the walls, peeled stickers at about 9" high on a floor-mounted furnace near the water meter, or anything else to indicate flooding above the 1/2" level that everyone saw.)
Is 385,000 gallons even reasonable for the flow expected from a broken water meter "freeze plate" in a month's time?
And, if anyone has been in this position before, is the Water Company on solid ground in charging me for a spill that came from a failure in their own equipment? (If I hadn't shut off the valves coming out of the meter, and/or my own pipes had broken, I'd feel differently about this.)
I have put these questions, in a gentlemanly way, to the Water Company. The rep now has agreed to send the meter out for "verification" -- to see whether it produced correct readings for the amount of water I'm being charged for. But I'm told that if the meter checks out correctly, there's no further avenue for appeal.
Any conclusions, suggestions, condolences?
Thanks, Scoot