We contract to have the majority of the water meters read on a quarterly basis, while others are read monthly pursuant to the Borough contractual agreement with the Pequannock River Basin Regional Sewerage Authority.
Our contractor physically reads each meter in the system; this reading is manually recorded into a hand held computer. Most customers have Remote Register Water Meters that consist of two sections. The first section is the meter where water physically passes through it and is recorded on an odometer style recorder. The second section is an exterior (outside) register that receives a pulse generated signal sent via wire (telephone type) from the meter and advances the trip style odometer recorder on it.
Depending upon the meter manufacturer, the pulse generated signal will be sent from the meter to the remote in either 1,000 or 100 gallon increments. We continuously upgrade the water meters throughout the system to ensure that all customers are billed equally and correctly in the same way and manner.
Currently, we are installing the next generation of remote style meters referred to as Probe-Remote Water Meters. Similar to Remote Register mentioned before, but with this important difference the exterior (outside) device is an extension of the meter recorder and has no moving or working parts. Therefore, the reading received is the actual reading of the water meter itself, it is not dependent upon any additional device, and the read is directly loaded into the hand held computer. Thus eliminating another possible chance for human error due to incorrect data recording and/or posting.