The City of Woodinville describes itself as, “City Living, Country Style.” Located in the scenic Sammamish Valley northeast of Seattle, Washington, the city is a popular tourist destination. Over 1.5 million visitors are drawn annually to the city’s wineries, plant nurseries, and scenic landscapes. Of Washington’s 500 wineries, 40 are located in Woodinville.

Woodinville is named after Ira and Susan Woodin, who were among the city’s first settlers during the 1870s. The city grew quickly in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s due to logging. In 1956 the Molbak family established their first nursery in the area. Today Molbak’s 16-acre greenhouse and nursery attracts a million visitors annually.

The Woodinville Water District, a separate entity from the City of Woodinville, provides water to the cities of Woodinville and Bothell and the surrounding areas. The District purchases all its water from the City of Seattle. The District (formerly King County Water District No. 104) first began serving water to its customers in January 1963. In the first year of operation the District served 14 million gallons of water.

Since 1963 the District has grown approximately 30 square miles.
In 1973 the District served 243 million gallons and in 2004 it served 1.5 billion gallons of water to its customers.

Today the District serves over 40,000 customers, which is projected to nearly double by 2020. To meet this need, the District will continue to expand its facilities. Currently it manages over 200 miles of water main, eight steel reservoirs, 52 pressure reducing stations, four water, and two sewer pump stations, among other facilities.

Low cost, easy to install system
The District is also in the process of modernizing its meter reading system by transitioning from a manual read system to an automatic meter reading system (AMR). In April 2006, they put out a request for bids for an AMR system that would be compatible with their old manual system, while being easy to install in new developments.

“We wanted something that we can use to perform radio reads on new developments, so fewer meters we will have to be manually read,” says Steve Brown, water utility supervisor. “Badger Meter ORION® met our requirements. Plus it came in at the lowest life cycle cost.”

After checking with other Badger® ORION® system users and receiving several strong recommendations, the District selected the Badger ORION system. Installation began in June 2006. “Installation is simple and straightforward,” reports Brown. “It doesn’t take a lot of time. It takes staff on average about 20 minutes to retrofit an existing meter with an RTR® and ORION transmitter.”

To date, 500 meters have been installed. Most of the meters have been installed in new developments, while about 15 percent have been for retrofits of existing water meters.

Faster, safer, more accurate reads
Using the Badger ORION system, reads are gathered much more quickly and efficiently. Meter readers simply drive the route with their laptops, and Badger ORION AMR does the rest, automatically collecting reads.

In one of the new developments where the District has installed 100 new radio read meters, a meter reader can read the whole route in a matter of minutes. “There’s no comparison,” says Joan Thomasson, operations and maintenance manager. “Manually reading this route would have taken over an hour. The ability to eventually read thousands of meters in a few days instead of several months has obvious benefits. It frees up manpower for other maintenance tasks.”

The Badger ORION system also means less wear and tear on readers and vehicles. To manually read each meter, readers have to stop every 50 feet or so, get out of the vehicle, bend down to open the lid and look at the meter, then enter each read into a handheld device.

“Imagine doing that over and over, thousands of times,” explains Thomasson. “Many of the District’s meters are located in rural areas and are difficult to reach, so meter readers have to climb through ditches and other natural hazards. With ORION the reader doesn’t even have to leave the vehicle, so it’s much safer.”

The Badger ORION system significantly improves read accuracy, too. “When you are manually reading thousands of meters, there’s a greater chance for human error, for example, transposing the numbers,” says Thomasson. “And whenever you have a misread, you have to have someone go back and check the accuracy of the read, which is more time consuming than the initial read.”

As radio read meters become more widespread, the District may eventually use Badger ORION’s optional leak detection system and offer customers the ability to install an optional meter monitor in their homes to help them monitor water usage. Both options are especially useful in helping customers identify leaks and resolve billing disputes.

“The ORION drive-by system has been a very good AMR system,” says Brown. “It’s low cost and easy to install. It can read a lot of meters in a short period of time. And it’s very accurate. It is working well for us.”

About the author:
Dave Marsh is a freelance writer based in Port Washington, Wisconsin.