I have a 'Smart' meter on my water supply. I have a softener for the house supply that regenerates based on the amount of water used. The only unsoftened outlets are the kitchen drinking water cold tap, and the outdoor tap, both of which come from the same pipe. Recently, in the last month, the softener's salt consumption has gone up, considerably. I looked at the water meter readings, and they agree. But I cannot think of any change in my water use. The obvious thought is that there is a leak, but where? I can find absolutely no sign of any. The outside tap does not leak, and is shut off indoors anyway. None of the taps are dripping. None of the overflows are showing any discharge. The drains for the washing machine and the dishwasher need power to run water to the drain. There is a cellar in the middle of the house, where I would expect any water that leaked out to gravitate to, but it is dry. The box where the outside pipe enters the house is dry, so no leaks there, and the underground space outside which houses the meter is similarly dry. There is no sound of running water in the softener box, which is right above the entry box. The recorded meter readings give little help, they are sporadic and interrupted enough that trying to correlate high water use with a known event in the house is very difficult indeed. But on a day when I did a clothes wash, and therefore used maybe 80-100 litres more than a 'normal' day, the readings show that I had minimal use! The water company online query system says that it could take up to 10 days to respond to questions. As much as the reported readings are of little help, they do confirm that the theoretical leak is of softened water, and all but 1 run of that is in the house, so would be discovered. Only one run, to the kitchen, is underground, in concrete. I hope that there is no leak there, it would be messy to fix that. And how do I check?
I am trying to think of experiments using selective shut-offs to try to isolate any leak, but the random meter readings reported by the water company do not help detailed analysis. Luckily, as we are in summer, I can leave the supply turned off without worrying about anything running dry and burning out.
Any helpful ideas would be welcome.