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Jebus. $500 water bill?!
I'm assuming, given that the water company's reaction included a threat for immediate disconnection, that this is not for the first month of service. It's just the first time they "paid".
I once had a $1500 one - Miami (at least then) billed quarterly and when I utterly panicked and hired a plumber they found the cracked main line from the street had been pouring under my parking slab for months.
Didn’t think to, I dunno, call me to ask if I had started a “will fill your Olympic pool for free” business but were happy to knock off 10% when I showed them the thousands of repair bills to fix it.
My city sent me a letter once because it looked like I had a toilet always running. They were right.
That certainly would have been helpful in my experience.
Man, that's hella unfortunate.
I came back from vacation in January this year to find my meter box full of water. The half century old PVC line supplying the house from the meter finally gave in. Needless to say the city couldn't do anything about it since it was on my side of the meter. Five grand later, and now I've got a new PEX line. Fingers crossed it doesn't happen again in my lifetime and it'll be the next guy's problem in ~40-60 years.
The city was aware of the leak, and even though I never sent them proof that the leak was fixed they gave me credits for December and January that made it so I didn't have a water bill in March and April came in at around 30 bucks. Doesn't really offset the cost of repair that much, but hey, I'll take what I can get.
Jesus, and last month, my wife smelled gas by the back porch. I leaned over to the pipe running from the ground into the house and smelled it. Then I saw where the years of water pooling in the flower bed rusted the cast iron line through. Called the gas company, but they were happy to move the meter from the back side of the property up the the back porch for free. So hopefully THAT'S good for another several decades too.
This after having to have two very big and very dead oaks cut down over the last couple years.
Still beats having a landlord by about a thousand miles.
My mortgage with putting a new roof on the place this year combined was less than ghe average rental for an equivalent place
Hell with refinancing when interested rates were at the bottom, my mortgage is less than the last rental I had 15 years ago
My neighbor brags about his $400 water bill to keep his monoculture lawn green.
He always asks me what my secret is, but doesn't seem to believe that I've done literally nothing to my yard, so everything growing in it is adapted to our ecosystem.
Well, not literally nothing. I strategically neglect it in the spring so the shit that survived the last summer and winter can put down deep roots.
Someone here on Lemmy told me that if I didn't rake my leaves, my lawn would just turn into dead grass and slime and yet our lawn is covered in green grass despite our happily assisting our oak trees with their annual attempted murder plan.
Leaves on the ground help retain soil moisture, and provide nutrients to the soil, so that person was an idiot.
Also, damn you for reminding me that I have at least 3 oaks in my yard that need to come down. I've been repressing that experience.
Take them down now, because if you wait and a big storm comes...
We started with 12. All of them much older than the house. Several came down before that happened in June after our roof got holes punched in it from falling branches during previous storms. It wasn't the only one that came down either.
Now we're down to 4.
Luckily most of mine have already dropped most of their big limbs. Unfortunately One of those pierced the roof of my houses shitty sunroom kit.
I'm tempted to get tree climbing gear and do it myself.
Dont: the branches/logs hitting the ground will result in years of tiny pits in your yard just big and deep enough to break your ankle on. And if you hire someone and they break shit it's not necessarily your problem.
I'm not worried about pits. I have a fuck ton of cat feces tainted dirt to fill holes with over dug fire pits.
I can expand if wanted, but I don't think it's wanted
I'm very sceptical our lawn wouldn't pretty much die if we didn't rake at least a little.
We have a single maple (probably a norway maple) tree and the leaves are very plentiful and quite big so they cover pretty much the entire (small) lawn and in some places to absolute perfection and in multiple layers.
I bet if we could see the itemized list of charges it would include a previous balance and delinquency fees. Either that or he's doing some serious hydroponics.