How To Read a Water Meter

5/18/2018 (Permalink)

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Learning how to read a water meter is a fairly simple task. A water meter typically consists of various easy to read dials...

New water meters are quite simple to read. They typically have three dials or indicators:

1. A leak dial, which indicates if any water is running inside the property.
2. A one cubic foot dial, which measures in increments up to one cubic foot.
3. A cubic foot meter, which indicates the total historical water usage for the property.

An older water meter is harder to read in that it may have multiple dials. These dials each read in different increments of cubic feet, the largest registering 1,000,000 cubic feet. To understand your total water usage, you have add the totals in each dial. In the meter shown lower in this post all seven dials must be added in order to know how many cubic feet of water have been used historically, or for a certain period of time. Older water meters do not have one register that shows the complete total of use.