<p>We had a big bill one time, and the water guy went through my whole house until he found out what was wrong - the water softener was “running to the drain”. He shut it off, and we found out it was too old to be fixed (from the softener company.) I never got a credit - after all we did get the water. If it happens again (different house), I’ll know better.</p>
<p>Fix toilet. Even unhandy little me can change the flapper - the part is like $8. Complain to management too.</p>
<p>First step - find the water meter and read it and compare the number to what’s on the bill. There are many areas where it’s still a manual read (including mine) and human mistakes happen. They’ve made mistakes reading mine a number of times including charging me $0 one month and $600 some other month. My bill’s usually pretty high though because I have a grove of avocado trees. Also make sure the bill for the previous month was as high as it should have been. They sometimes send bills based on a projection than an actual read to save themselves effort but when they do read the next month it can be extra high.</p>
<p>If it turns out the read is accurate but that it was due to a leak, check with the water company to see if they’re willing to at least split the bill. They sometimes do it.</p>
<p>If you want to see if there’s a constant leak, make sure no water/sprinklers are running then go read the meter and then again in 30 minutes and see if it changes. It shouldn’t change.</p>
<p>Finally, if adequate notice was given to the landlord but the landlord failed to mitigate the problem you may have recourse there in getting the landlord to pay for it.</p>
<p>Son sent me an IM with this problem this afternoon at the office. I had him check a number of things and then went down to take a look. It was the design of a small ring that connects the chain to the flapper. I just moved the chain around to the other side of the ring and the problem was solved. I showed him what the problem was so that he could take care of it himself if it happened again. Water was running for a few hours.</p>
<p>BCEagle–Don’t tell edad!</p>