The 3 AM blip

Sterlingtimes

I experience a 3 AM blip in my water usage at least once a week. What could cause this? My son was at work on Saturday night; otherwise, the house occupants were all in bed. No appliances were running.

QrizB

If you don't mind me asking, where's the data from? Your water company's certified and calibrated meter, or somewhere else?

Sterlingtimes

QrizB said:

If you don't mind me asking, where's the data from? Your water company's certified and calibrated meter, or somewhere else?

The data are collected by my Severn Trent smart meter beneath the pavement and are relayed to a telegraph pole mast that is, by coincidence, only 80 metres from the meter. The data are displayed on a web page called My Smart Tracker.

Robin9

Doesn't appear to be an option with my ST Smart  but I like the Continuous Flow alert.

No idea what happens at 0300

QrizB

Ok, so it's probably not an instrumentation fault then.

Is it always 90 litres? That's quite a lot (about a third of our daily household consumption).

In another thread you mentioned a water softener. Does that regenerate its media  periodically?

mmmmikey

My old water softener used to run it's regeneration programme at 03:00. 90 litres sounds plausible if it's still on it's default settings. Mine had a fault and although it was softening the water it was regenerating most nights and using 30 or 40 litres - it's now been ditched and replaced with a much smaller travel softener which is designed for use in American RVs and more appropriate to my level of usage. It's also regenerating manually every couple of months which gives me more control. I did spend a bit of time working what all the settings were before I realised the old one was faulty and ditched it, so any questions just ask and I may be able to help.

Sterlingtimes

QrizB said:

Ok, so it's probably not an instrumentation fault then.

Is it always 90 litres? That's quite a lot (about a third of our daily household consumption).

In another thread you mentioned a water softener. Does that regenerate its media  periodically?

That's it. I feel so stupid now. Of course, it's the water softener.

Sterlingtimes

mmmmikey said:

My old water softener used to run it's regeneration programme at 03:00. 90 litres sounds plausible if it's still on it's default settings. Mine had a fault and although it was softening the water it was regenerating most nights and using 30 or 40 litres - it's now been ditched and replaced with a much smaller travel softener which is designed for use in American RVs and more appropriate to my level of usage. It's also regenerating manually every couple of months which gives me more control. I did spend a bit of time working what all the settings were before I realised the old one was faulty and ditched it, so any questions just ask and I may be able to help.

As per the previous post, it is the water softener. I had not thought about that. Problem resolved. Thank you!

Sterlingtimes

Robin9 said:

Doesn't appear to be an option with my ST Smart  but I like the Continuous Flow alert.

No idea what happens at 0300

Severn Trent is progressively installing the gateways on lamp posts or telegraph poles. My meter connects to the radio equipment above an enormous pole.