Norton, a home designer, recently moved into the Buckingham Road house after building it himself, with help from electricians and other laborers. He closely monitored the property throughout the two-year process, during which he paid water bills and often spent 14 hours a day at the site, he said.
Although he and others initially suspected a leak could have caused the problem, none has been found, and his water bills have since plummeted back to levels that resemble his neighborhood’s usage, according to a graph generated by the utility’s website.
Inspectors appeared at Norton's two-story, four-bedroom home multiple times after they discovered the high reading in June.
One visit brought eight workers from the utility, some wearing suits and others in hard hats, to examine the meter and property, Norton said.
They decided to remove the meter for further scrutiny, putting it through a series of tests, even resorting to some unconventional approaches involving vibration, to ensure the gauge wouldn’t have malfunctioned with the nearby operation of heavy machinery, Steiger said.
The utility also opted to pass the same amount of water through the device — 1.5 million gallons — and found that it measured the quantity accurately, he said.
“Honestly, after testing it as many ways as we know how, we found nothing wrong,” he said. “Zero.”
But Norton and others have scoffed at the idea that he, along with his wife and son, had actually pulled that much water through the meter.
The sheer quantity is enough to overflow a 3.5-foot-deep pool the size of a football field.
