The City of Akron is working neighborhood by neighborhood throughout its water service area to install new, higher-tech water meters. 

The replacement is free, but water customers must sign up for appointments to schedule the installation. The old meters, which were installed around 2004, are coming to the end of their approximately 20-year battery life. 

The project is close to halfway through, said Ken Crisp, the manager of the advanced metering infrastructure group leading the replacements, with about 40,000 meters installed and 45,000 still to go. The cost is nearly $60 million for the whole package, which includes the meter upgrade project, a customer information system, a billing system, a work order management system and a customer engagement portal. 

The timeline for the project, which started in earnest around 2020, had to be slowed substantially during the COVID pandemic because of supply chain and production issues – the radios in the meters have chips in them – plus, customers didn’t want extra people in their homes. 

Ken Crisp, the manager of the advanced metering infrastructure group leading the Akron water meter replacements, talks about the different parts of the project, including the “radio” he’s holding, which is installed outside the customer’s house and sends data about water usage to a collection tower. (Screenshot via Zoom)

Crisp said the installations are rotating around the city based on the oldest meters and radios, so first in, first out, more or less in a clockwise rotation around the city, although some neighborhoods in the rotation still have pockets where the meters haven’t been installed. 

The current area is North Hill — residents on the east side of town should get letters soon notifying them their neighborhood is open for installations. When that happens, they can schedule the meter replacement.

The nuts and bolts of scheduling an installation

If you haven’t had your meter installed yet, here’s how it works: 

  1. First, you should receive a letter from the contractor the city is working with, Utility Metering Solutions, that points to the website AkronH2O, (the letter O, not the number zero). 
  2. Add your basic information to the form, then click the “book now” button. You’ll see a calendar with days and times you can schedule your meter replacement, typically Monday through Friday. Some limited Saturday dates are also available. More will be added as the project nears completion.
  3. If your neighborhood’s cycle isn’t open, you won’t be able to schedule until it is. 
  4. If the web isn’t a good option for you, call 844-741-6248 Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

If you miss the letter and see installations happening in your area, you can still go to the website and get scheduled. A blue door hanger is the next step if you don’t schedule after the letter arrives. If you don’t respond to the door hanger, the next one will be yellow, with a more urgent message for you to get scheduled.

A blue door hanger.
A blue door hanger is the second notification step if you don’t schedule with the city to get your water meter replaced. (Susan Zake / Signal Akron)

If you don’t respond to the yellow door hanger, the City of Akron will come out and place an official turn-off notification on city letterhead, since the city is the one that turns water on and off, not the contractor. If you go ahead and schedule the appointment, the city will not shut off your water.

Crisp said, “We go through many available means to contact that customer before that were to happen.” 

One stumbling block the project may encounter is what Crisp calls “the finished basement scenario,” which is where your meter is in a location that’s covered up and not easily accessible. Basically, the worker will need to be able to run the transmitter wire to the outside – sometimes, that means the transmission wire will be visible in your basement and run up the wall. The contractor will work with you to find the best solution for your house.

During the installation, your water will be turned off for about an hour, which is about the time it will take to install the new meter. You must be present for the installation if your meter is indoors, and be sure to clear a pathway so the area is clear of obstacles and accessible to the worker. 

The contractors from Utility Metering Solutions should have an ID badge. They will be wearing a gray shirt with “UMS” on the sleeve or front or bright yellow t-shirts, jackets or vest with “UMS” or Utility Metering Solutions on the back. Their vehicles will also have a large UMS magnet on the side. All of the employees were run through a background check.

New meters with higher tech will improve customer service

The driver of the project, in addition to the aging of the current meters, Crisp said, is customer service for residents in Akron “to have better access to their water meter consumption, customer service in the aspect of identifying and notifying customers of potential issues that may be going on at their house.”   

These radios, which are typically installed on the outside of the house, talk to the base station once every four hours and dump their data, which they’re reading on the meter every hour.

In a scenario where there’s a leak in a customer’s house, Crisp said, “the only way we would know about it [now] is your usage would be elevated from month one to month two.”

The granularity of the new system will help identify leaks much more quickly, with the ability for the customer to be notified in whatever manner they’ve chosen, once the full system is in place.

“So the meters are getting upgraded, the billing system is getting upgraded, and the work order management system is getting upgraded,” Crisp said.

Editor-in-Chief (she/her)
Zake has deep roots in Northeast Ohio journalism. She was the managing editor for multimedia and special projects at the Akron Beacon Journal, where she began work as a staff photographer in 1986. Over a 20-year career, Zake worked in a variety of roles across departments that all help inform her current role as Signal Akron's editor in chief. Most recently, she was a journalism professor and student media adviser at Kent State University, where she worked with the next generation of journalists to understand public policy, environmental reporting, data and solutions reporting. Among her accomplishments was the launch of the Kent State NewsLab, an experiential and collaborative news commons that connects student reporters with outside professional partners.