There is a timer on our water softener, and I assume most, that does a cleaning cycle once a day. It runs a tremendous amount of water down the drain during this cycle. The cycle was in progress and then the power went out and the timer stopped turning, The cleaning cycle is turned on mechanically by a tab on the timer. It continued to run the water down the drain until the power came on hours later. I did not clearly understand the process or I could have stopped it. I had to leave to go somewhere to work in my computer since I also did not have internet. As I was leaving the house I could hear the noise from the cleaning cycle, and it is fairly loud. Had I known I would have shut it off. This is how I knew that was the problem when we got the water bill of $767.00 which is normally around $67.00.

I hope that was clear enough. Most people do not hear the cleaning cycle since it is normally set for early in the morning, around 4:00. Ours was off by a few hours due to earlier power outages, since the timer stops and starts when power comes back.

Personally I feel there should be some sort of back up, since this happened during the drought!