Upgraded meter reading system spells savings

ROACHDALE -- As part of the council’s efforts to improve a number of water issues in the town, newly developed meter-reading devices will soon be steadily installed onto Roachdale’s more than 400 water meters.

Receiving unanimous approval at Tuesday’s regular public session, the Neptune meter-reading system, which was proposed to the board Tuesday by representatives from the Utility Supply Company (USC) out of Indianapolis, promises to increase efficiency and accuracy for not only Clerk-treasurer Debbie Sillery and the billing process, but for the various issues residents have been experiencing, as well.

Town Utility Superintendent Troy Elless introduced the pair of agents from USC before the proposal, saying that Roachdale has already been in business with the company for some time.

“You’ve currently been buying our water meters, and the Neptune is a meter we are very proud of,” sales representative Brian Stader said to begin the proposal, “but the meters you’ve been buying have been ‘directory,’ which means you go out with paper and books, you follow the route, the (employee) opens the lid, looks inside, wipes it off and writes those numbers down before they go on to the next house. They then bring those figures back in and manually enter those into the (Keystone) software system.

“However, technology has taken meter reading in many different directions,” Stader continued. “And ‘radio’ is really where our industry has gone to.”

Using the existing brass, positive-displacement water meters that are currently in place at most residences, a radio-capable device with a low-profile antenna can now be easily attached to the meters and bypass manual readings altogether by broadcasting a signal that travels up to one-half of a mile in all directions.

Picking up the signals from each residence through the use of a hand-held device, utility employees would then be able to simply drive up and down the streets to allow the “hand-held” to acquire the signal, process the information and instantly input the information into the town’s Keystone billing software at town hall. This process also promises increased accuracy by removing the possibility of human error.

Alongside Superintendent Elless and Clerk-treasurer Sillery, council members Zach Bowers, Holly Cook and Kevin Cook were heavily in favor of the proposal, especially since the meter-reading process typically takes three employees an entire work week (upwards of $2,000 per month in labor costs) to complete.

“Some of the bad things are that numbers can be transposed or some of the numbers can be hard to read,” Sillery said of the meter installations, some of which are nearly five feet deep. “I went out with them one day and looked at some of the meters so I could understand exactly what they look at, and some of them are really hard to read.”

Bowers echoed the comments made by Sillery, adding that malfunctions will also be more readily caught and, in doing so, will help prevent costly mistakes.

“If somebody’s water meter is 20,000 gallons over what they did last month,” Bowers said, “(the system) automatically flags it. Then we can call them and say ‘hey, you guys obviously have a leak.’”

The meters come complete with a battery that is guaranteed to last at least 20 years. Stader explained that heat and sunlight are a battery’s worst enemy. But thanks to the locale of such devices, that isn’t expected to be a problem.

Furthermore, the devices are self-diagnosing, waterproof, theft-deterrant, lead-free and guaranteed for a lifetime.

Through past dealings, the town has already purchased 100 of these radio-capable devices as part of the larger wastewater rehabilitation project in anticipation of this move. However, with nearly 400 needed in total, more will be purchased in the coming weeks and months.

“When we did the water project last year, we (adjusted) a brass part on the meters because our intention initially with the water project was to include the radio-reader meters,” Bowers said. “We found other problems that we needed to address before we could do that, so we went ahead and got those meters in preparation for doing this -- we have 100 right now.”

Future purchases will be conducted on a per-delivery basis, which comprises 12 units per month or 144 per year.

An initial proposal, which will be adjusted when the exact number of devices is concluded, showed a total of 400 devices at a cost of $225 each (or $90,000). However, Stader told the board that the cost will decrease considerably when buying in bulk.

In a precautionary statement, Stader added that these devices will never cause the meter to speed up. Rather, the devices may cause the meters to slow down, if there is indeed any change at all.