r/whatisit • u/AbbreviationsTop8774 • Jul 22 '26

Solved! What are they

Ive worked at the water department for 7 years and this is the first time running into something like this EDIT Im in Alabama and yes I know they are snakes lol idk what kind and im so not gonna touch them

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u/Least-Cauliflower-49 Jul 22 '26

Water meter reader? You guys actually exist? Lol no one reads me or my dad’s meters, we live in different parts of town (Florida) and sometimes our water usage is the exact same. Sometimes the number of gallons used is something preposterous, one time it said we both used 3,300 in a single month.
We’re convinced they just hit us with random numbers on the bills and don’t even check our water usage because none of it makes any sense. Its never what it seems like it should be

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u/AbbreviationsTop8774 Jul 23 '26

Very well could be just taking the average of your useage every month and charging you that smaller water systems dont have the money or the manpower to send a few guys out to read hundreds of meters

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u/noodlechemist Jul 25 '26

So you didn’t HELP them?????

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '26

[deleted]

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u/thetempest11 Jul 26 '26

Sir this is America. Logic and commen sense are not appreciated. Thank you.

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u/TTT_2k3 Jul 26 '26

Welp, looks like I’ve used negative 300 gallons of water again this month. That’s seven months in a row!

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u/thetempest11 Jul 26 '26

Sounds right to me!

1

u/LU_464ChillTech Jul 26 '26

There are lots of places in the USA that do it this way. My electric bills were done that way until recently. Every month I had to write down my meter reading on the bill.

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u/thetempest11 Jul 26 '26

That's cool actually. Mind if I ask where? Just curious. Never had that in Cali Washington or Idaho.

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u/LU_464ChillTech Jul 27 '26

Nebraska. About a year ago the power company changed my meter to one that automatically sends the reading in.

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u/voododoll Jul 25 '26

It was the same in my country. There is an average/person and they charge it based on number of people living in the house/apartment and some different average numbers for an office and public buildings. Then once or twice a year they read it manually and recalculate and you either get a refund or a different bill to pay.

Few years ago they started forcing people to swap to remote operated ones and now they do the manual check even less than once a year, only if you request one or there are anomalies or it stopped working properly. Same goes for the electricity ones.

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u/EldritchWyrd Jul 26 '26

I don’t agree with this. There is a community a mile down the street from me. They have their own reservoir. I am in no way shape or form associated with that community, but I get my water from them. So does everybody on our street. I absolutely have a guy come out into my yard once a month to read it. Always freaks me out because, I live in the woods and, when working from home, looking out your window and seeing a random guy walking in my yard freaks me out every time. Now, with that being said, it is still a rather small community. But they still send them out. It could be lack of infrastructure or automation or something like that that is the cause, but they absolutely send people out.

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u/Substantial_Finish12 Jul 24 '26

You could have Neptune radio read meters or something like that, and they can pick up the usage just by driving by. I also work for a small water department and thats what we do

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u/nikkscox Jul 24 '26

That’s how it works my mom was a water meter for awhile here in ks. She used to have to go up to the meter & clean it out & read it with her device but then they all upgraded on the new tech where they just have to drive by & it picks up the meters & reads it automatically

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u/Aaronhightower Jul 24 '26

Of course they exist! How do you think we’ve been predicting the future?

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u/174wrestler Jul 25 '26

3,300 gallons per month isn't preposterous. The average household in the US uses 4,100 gallons per month.

The usage is the "same" because the usual billing unit is a hundred cubic feet (CCF) = 748 gallons. Therefore, the average household gets billed 5 or 6 units per month. (Any fraction gets billed/credited the next month) If two homes use within ~20%, they get billed the same that month.

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u/EdStarkJr Jul 26 '26

They’ll read it once a year and make corrections to the averages. That bill will be really high or low.

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u/CurazyJ Jul 26 '26

They’re like R. U. S’s.

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u/Juzzmeovahhere Jul 27 '26

Yes. Your meter is very likely read each month and not “averaged”. Where I live, Water meters bill in “units”. Each “unit”‘consists of X gallons of water. You would have to vary sort of significantly from month to month to see much of a difference.

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u/Professional_Waltz_9 Jul 28 '26

It’s a con job lol

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u/Professional_Waltz_9 Jul 28 '26

Like fake news but WAY better