Water Meter engineering question

[mr bill]

My normal water use for the five buildings on the property consistently averages around one m3 per day. For the last billing period I received a bill for 149m3 [almost 4000 pesos].

For a week after receiving the bill I checked the meter daily and use was normal: 1m3/day. SIMIPAG came10 days later and inspected the meter and of course found it functioning normally.

The bill suggests an average of 4025 litros of water was used per day - but it would have to be more as on 3 or 4 days water was cut off in the street and on other days when there was water the pressure was not sufficient to carry it five floors up to the tinacos. On one of these days we hooked up a pump and pumped 2000 litros to the tinacos. It took six hours.

Here?s my question to someone with engineering knowledge of water meters. Water passes from the street through the meter into the property and is accurately metered. By ?sucking? on the flow after the meter, even though we only took 2m3 of water could that six hours of pumping alter/inflate the reading?

[ohpaco]

These meters work by spinning a vane in the water stream flow (kind of like a turbine) which then drives a mechanical counter. I have never tested them by applying a suction as you suggest, but it seems quite believable that such an operating mode could cause a lot of air bubbles to be present in the flow stream and therefore cause the meter to read considerably higher than normal. - Paco (Sta Rosa)