On Nukman's statement:
What we're trying to do is see every 5 or 15 minutes what water usage is.
We're having a ton of water used, periodically. Bills up around $300-$400/mo. Other months our bill is around $20. You're talking swimming pool size quantities of water, and we don't have any apparent leaks anywhere.
We need to monitor water usage to help us determine what going on. When we go out and look at the meter, it's doesn't move. The water service people pulled their meter and took it to a calibration lab. It was perfect. Brought it back and put in back in. I don't think it a water service problem. I definitely think water is passing through their meter, in quantities indicated.
We have a plumber on the problem, and we're working with the water service people. Everyone is concerned. Under normal conditions, the plumber tells us we have no leakage. We're basically going to have to monitor 24hrs/day, for long periods to try and figure out what's happening to us.
The plumber did a pressure test of the lines, and said we had no leaks when the tests were done. At some point, during some days, WE DO HAVE HIGH WATER CONSUMPTION. Then, we would be showing definite "leakage".
We go out during some days and look at the meter. No motion.
So, if there's a cheap way of doing it, it would be good for us to have chart monitoring. That way, we could pinpoint when the spike occurs, and see if any church activities were linked to it. The meter is a Badger, model 70. They have it set up for remote reading. Tomorrow, I'm calling Badger and asking what their signals look like. It's possible that could be the way we trigger chart recording. Could be no church activities are there when the spike occurs (when I say spike, it would be high for some time period).
One thing I'm leaning a bit toward is we have a primer/trap somewhere that is letting us dump tons of water into the sewer. If the primer/trap were to dry up, the primer would stick open, that would dump 1/4" or 1/2" line directly into the sewer, through the trap. The next thing that could close such stickage would be a water diversion, elsewhere on that line.
I think we could focus on that as the cause, if we knew when certain things were happening. This, again, gets us going to water chart monitoring.
If we can't/won't do chart monitoring, we can go on best info we have. We're going to go back for 1950, and ask guys where primer/traps were typically installed, and where/how. We may have a floor drain in the kitchen that would be a good source for "reaching" for a solution. Problem is, we'll have to bust concret and do some digging, and hope we find a trap/drain there. If so, replace it and see what happens.
This thing is a bit of a spooky problem.