So about a month and a half ago I turned on the ancient water softener in our basement, because we had tons of calcium deposits on our dishes. I believe I had run it for a while when we first moved in, but gave after a bit because I thought it wasn’t worth the trouble of handling the salt and such.

This morning, a guy from the water dept came to my door. He was checking to see if the meter was messed up, or if we had a leak.

Uh-oh.

I turned off the softener. The meter stopped spinning. That was “the leak.” I guess it just never shut itself off, so it was constantly running water through itself. I actually noticed it seemed to run a lot, but I’m a total novice with this shit, and assumed it was okay.

So I called the utility office, because I was concerned about what the bill might be. For good reason.

Apparently, in the month of march, we had used 115,000 gallons of water.

That will be $683, please.

And of course, since I didn’t turn it off until the middle of march, I’d expect another half that much to get tacked on for April. That should kick us up over $1000.

Coulda bought a new softener for that, and done other improvements we need.

They’ll spread it over 6 months, which is nice. I could pay it all now, but it wouldn’t be easy.

I know, I know, it’s just money, but… dammit. I was hoping we were getting ahead. And now something stupid I did cost us a whole chunk of change.

frown