How To Read Amco Water Meter

[Yoana Terrano]

Thewater meter shown here shows usage of 53,586.5 Gallons. However, if your water department bills in thousands, your bill may show 53,000, or 53,500 if they bill to 100 gallons. Follow the steps and we'll show you how this is determined and how to read your own meter accurately.

First, notice what the register increment is. In this case it is in GALLONS. It could be Cubic Feet, or outside the USA it may be Cubic Meters. You will notice on this register that one of the numerical readings of the odometer is not a moving wheel like the others, but is a printed zero. Almost no utility bills water to the actual gallon. If they bill to 10 gallon increments, they would read only the moving white and black wheels for a reading of 53580. Why 80 and not 90 is explained in the next step. On larger meters, there could be two or more printed zeros represented by the sweep hand.

The printed zero is actually replaced by the location of the sweep hand for actual usage, troubleshooting, or testing. If on the 2 circled, it would be replaced by 2. Each full number is one gallon in this case, so if the sweep hand moves from 3 to 4 as shown with the arrow, that is one gallon of usage. The numbers between are 10ths of gallons, so the number circled between 4 and 5 represents 4.7 gallons. In THIS meter, the sweep hand is on 6.5, so the fixed zero is replaced by 6.5 gallons for actual use.

You will notice the first MOVING number wheel is moved between 8 and 9. It is not fully centered on 9 yet, and the sweep hand is on 6.5, so it is counted as 8. When the sweep hand reaches directly on "0" it will then count as 9. The odometer wheel will be centered and counted as whole. Reading the last TWO digits, one moving and one fixed is 86.5 gallons.

You may have noticed that the last three digit are dark, and those to the left of them are white or light colored. This is an industry standard for manual reading. Most utilities that bill in gallons do so 1000 gallon increments. The amount used under the 1000 is 586.5 gallons in this case. When manually reading, most meter readers ignore the black/dark numbers and only read the white numbers which they enter on their meter book or handheld computer to bill by. This saves writing or entering insignificant numbers. A city billing in 1000 gallon increments would read ONLY the white digits and bill for 53,000 gallons. Meter reading almost never rounds up, but drops the last insignificant digits.

If your meter registers in Cubic Feet instead of gallons, the black/dark digits may be 10 cubic feet instead of 100 gallons. Also in cubic feet, there may be no fixed zero and the sweep had represents 10ths and 100ths of gallons instead of gallons and tenths. Cubic feet is a larger increment. One cubic foot is 7.48 gallons

If you are billed in Cubic Meters, there may be no fixed printed zero, and the sweep represents 10ths (100 liters) and 100ths (10 liters), and maybe even 1000ths (1 liter) of a meter. Cubic Meters is an even larger increment than cubic feet with 1 cubic meter being approximately 264 gallons.

Besides the moving odometer wheels and sweep hand you may find another small moving dial. This is the leak indicator. It will move when water is flowing too slow to see the sweep hand move and allow you to know if you have a small leak or small water flow. In some meters, there is no sweep hand and the dial serves as both a leak indicator and to measure low flows not indicated by the odometer wheels.

Once you have both readings you will subtract the two readings to get the number of gallons (or cubic feet) used! If the meter reads in Cubic Feet, simply multiply the difference by 7.48 to convert to gallons.

Finally, log on to the Flume portal at portal.flumewater.com and select the three horizontal dashes in the top right corner. Then, select Settings > Meter Accuracy Test. Follow the steps below to compare your Flume usage.

If your recorded water usage is still looking off in a few days, please reach back out to us! We'll take another look at your data to see what else we can do. Please reach out to support if you have questions!

AMCO Water Metering Systems Inc. is one of the global industrial affiliates of Ruhrgas Industries, as part of its Business Unit Water. AMCO Water provides project planning, from concept to completion, for the best meters and reading systems to professional project management, from consulting to installation. The company's leading metering solutions are enhanced through its long-standing strategic alliances with the leading AMR providers and Installation Service companies. This strategic approach allows AMCO to offer a municipality the best possible solution for their individual needs. Municipalities such as Boston, District of Columbia and Fort Wayne chose AMCO Water to solve their water metering needs.

In each case, the AMCO absolute encoder water meter was the meter of choice. The AMCO absolute encoder is the only fully encoded 6 wheel absolute encoded register on the market. The encoder actually reads and encodes the lowest value odometer. The encoder's benefits include: increased efficiency, cuts reading time in half, eliminates potential errors and reduces meter reading & customer service costs.

Driven by the need to replace aging, inaccurate water meters, the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) awarded one of North America's largest water utility Fixed Network RF System implementations to the team of AMCO Water, United Metering and Hexagram. AMCO's portion of the three-year project represents approximately 130,000 new AMCO absolute encoder water meters. All meters are being equipped with Hexagram transmitters and the fixed network data collection system will be integrated with WASA's customer information and billing system.

WASA's analysis indicated that its residential and commercial meters, many over 25 years old, required significant maintenance. "The revenue improvement we will see from meter replacement covers the cost of the program. The AMR technology from AMCO enables WASA to both improve our operations and provide better service to our customers in terms of measurement and billing accuracy and timeliness," said Jerry Johnson, WASA General Manager.

The meter installation process began in April 2002. Within three years, all water meters will be replaced with new state-of-the-art technology that will allow WASA to obtain actual reads from the meters without dispatching meter reading personnel to individual residences. Unlike the old system, which sometimes depended on estimated readings, the AMCO absolute encoder meters and AMR system will assure virtually 100% accuracy every month.

The new AMR technology will be fully integrated with WASA's Customer Billing and Information System. This will give WASA's customers the ability to retrieve daily meter readings and water usage information through WASA's website and phone system.

The Boston Water and Sewer Commission's (BWSC) had a water meter system that consisted of bimonthly meter readings. This process was time consuming and sometimes resulted in estimated bills. BWSC wanted to improve service to its customers and turned to AMCO Water to achieve its goals. BWSC awarded AMCO Water a 36-month contract to replace 87,000 aging water meters with AMCO absolute encoder water meters and upgrade Boston's meter reading system to Fixed Network Radio.

"We've undertaken this initiative to improve the effectiveness of our meter reading and customer service operations, and believe implementing automatic meter reading for all customers will most significantly enhance service to our customers," said Vincent Mannering, BWSC Executive Director. "One of our goals was to reduce unaccounted for water, so meter performance played a major part in our decision. AMCO demonstrated strength beyond metering and AMR and approached the project as a partnership with BWSC."

The implementation of AMCO water meters and the automated meter reading will eliminate estimated bills, reduce the number of visits by BWSC meter readers and enables BWSC to track citywide distribution losses, therefore improving response time for service disruptions.

Installation of the new meters began in November 2002 and the project is planned to end in January 2005. The AMCO encoder water meter includes a meter transmission unit that remotely transmits water meter readings to data collection units located throughout Boston. The data is then transmitted to a computer database at BWSC via cell phone. This system enables BWSC to take daily water meter readings.

Like BWSC and DCWASA, Fort Wayne turned to AMCO Water to solve its water metering needs. Fort Wayne awarded AMCO Water a 12-month contract to replace aging water meters in the system and to upgrade 75,000 meters to a Mobile Radio System. The issues that led Fort Wayne to replace and upgrade its water meters were the lack of consistency in meter readings (inside meter readings were mismatched to outside meter readings). AMCO's proposal will benefit the needs of Water Maintenance, Customer Service, Meter Reading, Finance and Legal by improving departmental efficiencies and increasing customer satisfaction.

The combination of the new AMCO absolute encoder meters with Itron's Mobile Data Collector will provide better efficiency in Fort Wayne's meter readings. The use of the Mobile Data Collector allows for meter readings to be retrieved from public access areas using a vehicle equipped with a radio, therefore reducing the time needed to complete meter readings. "Instead of 7 hours to read the meters it will take 15 minutes," said Phil Gia Quinta, Utility Services Manager, referring to readings in a typical neighborhood.

The technology of AMCO's absolute encoder water meter and the AMR systems provided the solutions that Boston, DC and Fort Wayne wanted to improve efficiencies. The AMCO water meters and AMR system will improve customer service, provide accurate meter readings, and reduce costs.

OCALA, FL, Jan. 23, 2007 -- AMCO Water Metering Systems Inc. has changed its name to Elster AMCO Water Inc. The name change is part of the Elster Group business transformation in North America that also includes Elster Electricity, Elster Integrated Solutions and the Elster Gas group. This alignment enables the Elster Group in North America to better serve utility customers by providing leading-edge automated meter reading (AMR) and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) solutions for water, gas and electricity.

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