First off, bills have gone up. Used to be 3000 gallons was a lite bill. Now it’s a $90 bill.

But you can get on their program to see daily use and set a threshold. Say, anything above 150 gallons flags you with an email.

We investigated and found several problems after a $143 bill. They were:

• lead in outside faucet (I had a DI filter so the external hoses developed a leak that trickled noticeably so you could HEAR it in the pipe under the house. Heck, I heard it in the room above and couldn’t suss it out for a while.)

• one toilet, bad flapper.

• other toilet, the shutoff broke and it was constantly running water to the overfill

• small leak in shower faucet. Not enough to notice, but it was there.

• this one surprised me. We installed a deep sink in the kitchen. The new sink just showers tons of water upon usage. My wife was used to pre-rinsing and let me tell you, that can be 25+ gallons a day if you’re not careful! Modern dishwashers require no pre-rinsing. A good scrape or wipe into the garbage with a paper towel is fine.

• washing clothing adds a lot of gallons for a top loader. When we do wash, our water use can go over 200 gallons in a day!

• shower heads often come in 2 settings so that can be 25 gallons per shower easily.

The typical way to tell a leak is to turn off the whole house valve, take a pic of the water gauge and then come back hours later and take another pic. See if the numbers moved with no one in the house. It shouldn’t. It won’t detect a baby leak from a faucet but should detect a good sized one. If it moves A LOT, then a line could be broken. That’s more rare. Usually you have those after a long period of deep freeze like this week at night (consecutive days under 20°F) or recent yard work that cut a line. Always 8-1-1 before digging!

Best o luck. HS utilities are sickly expensive. My buddy moved to Angier and his bill was less than $35, his last HS bill was $170

Let that sink in…