Today’s Asbury Park Press has a story about an effort to explain what appears to be soaring water usage at the Red Bank Middle School, which tripled in the July-October billing period, to 1,500 gallons per day.

So far, plumbers, public works officials and heating-and-cooling professionals have been stumped. The water meter is working properly, officials say, but there’s no sign of a leak or open tap.

From the article:

“We started looking for obvious leaks, we checked under the building for flooding, we checked the irrigation systems and all came up blank,” said Ann Darrow, school business administrator. “I wish there was a symptom.”

On Friday, contractors who renovated the school toured the building but found no smoking gun or leaking pipe, Darrow said.

“It’s cumbersome because even our professionals are scratching their heads,” she said. “We wanted them to check areas we can’t even think of.”

Flushometers that automatically start toilets after usage were found to have been set to provide more water than necessary, but that wasn’t the culprit, Darrow told the Press.

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