A Simpler Way to Read Water Meters

Tucked away on the Pacific coast of northern Oregon is Tillamook County, an agricultural community known for its dairy farms, timber, and fishing industries. Tillamook County’s municipal water supplier, Fairview Water District, serves approximately 1,200 residents in the area. The water municipality is a two-person operation and together with their board, they have been working to update the city’s

aging water infrastructure and improve the efficiency of their day-to-day operations. During the initial phase of Fairview’s water master plan, Water Superintendent David Pace discovered most of the meters in the system were at least 20 years old. Of the meters removed and tested, they were on average 33% inaccurate at low flow levels, which reduces Fairview’s billable usage by 9%.

Also, with no remote reading capabilities, a limited staff, and a monthly billing cycle, Pace was tasked with manually reading meters located in backyards of homes, dairy farm fields and other hard to reach remote location. Water superintendent, David Pace, now performs meter readings electronically in a third of the time it previously took.

For Fairview to operate more efficiently, update the system’s technology, and recover the lost revenue recently discovered, they needed new meters and a meter reading solution that was straightforward. With the help of Kamstrup’s flowIQ® smart ultrasonic water meters and automated meter reading (AMR) system, Fairview is now operating more confidently because they can rest assured their investment is a lasting one.

Part of Fairview’s new metering system consists of flowIQ® ultrasonic water meters—meters that undergo a thorough testing and calibration process

before leaving the fully automated manufacturing facility in which they are produced. flowIQ® meters are engineered to be highly accurate, with a low flow starting at .025 gallons per minute. And the meters are proven to maintain a flat, consistent accuracy curve for the life of the meter. Fairview now collects revenue equal to the amount of water actually delivered to customers.

Pace performs meter readings electronically in a third of the time it previously took.

“The meter reading program and download process was very straightforward and only required downloading a file and program from Kamstrup and entering the addresses for the meters,” said Pace.  The program has the ability to divide meters into groups to create routes and a job list, as well as transmit the data directly into the billing software to reduce administrative time and potential billing errors.

Implementing Kamstrup’s metering system allows Fairview Water to eliminate tedious tasks so they can spend time on activities that further improve the condition of the distribution system.