Water woes

Well, we are finally back at our restoration project.  We have been away from this project, but we had a few issues to deal with while we waited...

 Fall of 2015, the water company replaced all the water meters along our street and just a few months later in February of 2016, that brand new meter cracked while we were away on vacation and left us with inches of water in the basement over 9 days.  Yup... at $2000 water bill... and all the new kitchen cabinets we had just put together (our workshop was in the basement), were all wet and destroyed.  To boot, all the asbestos tiles on the floor lifted and we had to call in the big guns for asbestos remediation.  Our insurance company was great in going after the company for the defective meter...

 When the water company came to the site to "claim" the meter, since the meter does belong to the company, they insisted that I had other broken pipes that caused the water damage. When they replaced the meter, I had them turn on the water full force just to prove the pipes were fine... no leaks!  I also had the foresight to take pictures of the defective meter before the removed it because once they came in to replace it, they were very covert in hiding the meter from me.
Crazy the things we have to do to protect ourselves...

We are glad to report that after the insurance company did their investigation, they found the water company at fault and covered all the damages.

But, there is more, ... a year later, the water company was upgrading meters again, came an installed a NEW meter.  We had at this point winterized the house, so with no water flowing, we didn't have an issue until we tried to turn on the water this past summer.  Yup.. they installed a defective meter, again.  Fortunately, we had the water turned of from the street, so when the water company came and turned on the water and there was no water flowing, after two service calls and changing out out all the valves... and still no water.  The the technician has a light-bulb moment, checked out the meter, apologized profusely... and changed out the water meter again. So, now, we finally have working water service.  While we probably didn't have to change the old valves, putting in new ball valves was a definite upgrade and worth the effort in the long run.