air seperators do you have a large water bill

air seperators.

here is a way to not pay for air in the lines..  but if you have high pressure see the next posts.   

I have another theory why some have very high water bills.     The meters are accurate.    

I put on a air separator.    But...   Well I am on the main line with the campground.  As we know the campground water is always on.    Their is a shutoff 100 feet past my property to the north where they shut the water off for the water line on the east side of the street.    So it is rare for me to have my water off.    This winter and recently the water pump or lines have not been on and I noticed a higher than normal usage for no reason.     I actually have a excel spreadsheet for my water and electric for 14 years of almost daily readings when I am down here.     So I can pick out severe problems when they occur.      

One recent one that was hard to figure out was a toilet that was intermittent and sticking open sometimes and not others.     This leak over 2 months of not being able to find it cast about 20 cubic meters of water.    And a pipe crack overnight about 15 cubic meters because of how large my water pressure from the city is.     I would not have looked for the pipe break if I was not reading the meter so much and it would have been a couple hundred dollar water leak or much higher if I was not here.  As we know some people have had yes USD$2,000.00 water bills.    Shut your water off at the meter...   have someone turn it on one day every other week for a day and send you readings.  

Ok,  back to the new issue, I have a air separator, but I also have two storage tanks, one large below ground and the other a small above the roof for gravity feed is we lose electric.       so on these recent city water outages it drops the water levels in my pilas.     Thus it opens the valve for these tanks so that air can just pass by because there is no back pressure to make it go through the air separators.    So in theory a spring loaded one way valve could put enough pressure on the line to force it to go out the air separators.  But this would take some testing.       Probably the best would be to make a tall J trap out of pvc tubing that will give a few foot pounds of resistance.    At the top of the J trap a larger diameter tubing may be a better design.    

Yesterday this hit me when I had turned off the water main at the gate because the water was off all sunday.     Generally  you do not want the initial water when repair has been completed by the water department.     So i was heading out for a bike ride and could hear a whistling sound at my gate, I went and looked and it was my air separator just whistling with air coming out because my shut off was closed.    I should have opened the valve right then to see if the whistling sound dropped in dBs/volume to know this is for sure a condition.     this sound was continuous for about an hour before water arrived.    

Now for people that get shut off every other day this could be a significant impact.    

so contact me if you have water bills that are higher than you think it should be and have a float level filling tank and I will keep you posted if I can find a good test subject to work with.

also as an example because of my reading the meter a lot, i recently had a toilet leak that was 7 cubic meters a day. It was a bathroom I might use times a year, and would not have caught it for month?   remember when you receive you bill with a problem it is one month late so you will have a second bill the same.     So set up a spreadsheet enter the numbers as much as possible.  only takes a few minutes.

here is a product with the UFR that should solve the problem. but a j trap will do the same.


http://www.arivalves.com/air-valves
http://www.arivalves.com/products/ufr

Bar To Psi (Pound Force Per Square Inch) Conversion
Bars to pound per square inch conversion table shows the most common values for the quick reference. Alternatively, you may use the converter below to convert any other values.
1 Bar = 14.5037738 Psi
Bar is the atmospheric pressure at the sea level.
Psi is 1 pound of force per square inch.


http://www.asknumbers.com/bars-to-psi.aspx