On 9/25/2015 1:26 PM, Bob F wrote:
Don Y wrote:

I'll try to find a time when the house water use is "none" and photo
the meter indicator, then anotehr snapshot some hours later. If
no visible movement, conclude the problem *can't* be water leakage
(unless it is coming from neighbor's meter -- one of his frequent
guests likes to park *on* the meter box!) and MUST be something else
("Golfers" : )

Clean the box out. A shop vac works well for this. The moles will re-fill it.
They would quickly fill mine enough that the meter reader would have to wipe off
the meter face (They never bothered to put the metal cover of the meter down) to
be able to read it.

Are you just offering this as a way to test if it is moles/critters?
I.e., instead of checking the meter for water consumption (which, I
guess, wouldn't tell me if there was a leak upstream of the meter or
from the neighbor's meter)?

Just pull the outer meter box out of the ground after digging it loose around
it. Then slide concrete board, bricks, or heavy plastic under the meter, and

I could possibly use a large (12"-15") square "paver". There's not much
clearance between the valve box and the concrete curb, on the one side,
and the sidewalk, on the other. A 12" paver might be a bit of a stretch...

around the pipes coming up from below, so that the box can be set flat on that
layer.

I don't think the cast iron (?) box is tall enough to be supported from below
the meter (and still reach grade level). For the irrigation "vaults",
I made a form and just "poured" a short wall around the perimeter of the
slab (with openings for the pipe going in and pipes coming out) and
set the (plastic) valve box atop that. Then, filled the gaps around each
of the pipes with caulking compound to prevent soil from infiltrating through
those openings (the caulk being temporary enough taht I could easily
remove and replace it if I ever needed to open the unions and remove the
manifold assembly for service).

Then fill in around the box. Keep any gaps small enough that moles cannot
push dirt though the gaps.

Aren't moles *really* small? E.g., for the valve boxes, the clearance around
each of the inlet/outlet pipes was on the order of an inch. I'd imagine this
would be *huge* in "mole terms"?

A line of bricks under the outside edge can be used
to bring the origional box higher as needed.

Ah, that would be easier than pouring the walls like I did for the valve boxes!

I'll have to make some time to explore this more carefully. Is there something
that the critters are *seeking* in that area (moisture?) that I could
similarly interrupt (make them NOT want to be there)?