How much water do you really use?
By Michael Johnson, Editor
If you haven’t met Richard Parker or Mark Dicken yet, you soon will. The two men are in charge of replacing your old water meter with a new and improved version and so far they’ve visited about 475 area homes and businesses in search of meters. These old water meters are, in some cases, 60 years old and in most cases faulty. The men, from Total Back Flow and Meter Resources, headquartered in Salix, Iowa, have a dirty job. It’s not unusual to find them belly-crawling their way through dirt and cobwebs to find hidden water meters that are original to the home. "It’s something else," Dicken said. They’ve found meters inside cupboards, hidden behind shelving but sometimes they can’t find them at all. "Water meters have a life expectancy of 10 to 15 years," Parker said showing off the new version which broadcasts the water usage to a hand-held reader.
