Mueller Systems: Davie County Public Utilities Improves Customer Service And Operational Efficiency With Hot Rod™ From Mueller Systems

The manual bi-monthly collection of readings from each meter was no small challenge—or expense—for Davie County Public Utilities. Oftentimes, meters in its water system were separated by a half-mile or more, and covering the routes could take a driver and a meter reader as many as 50 days. To help improve operational efficiencies and reduce the amount of time it took to collect monthly reads, Davie County Public Utilities began searching for an advanced meter reading (AMR) system. “Davie County and its townships are growing, and we knew we wouldn’t be able to keep up considering how long it took us to collect monthly readings over such a wide service area,” said Johnny Lambert, director of Davie County Public Utilities. “As a result, we began researching AMR. And, since we have a bimonthly billing cycle, we were especially interested in a solution that stored meter reads throughout the entire billing period.”

The county turned to Mueller Systems, a subsidiary of Mueller Water Products, Inc., and leading provider of innovative water infrastructure products and services and technologically advanced metering systems for water, electric and gas systems. Davie County Public Utilities decided to implement Mueller Systems’ high performance AMR system, Hot Rod™, in addition to a phased replacement of its outdated water meters with Hersey brass water meters. The components of the Hot Rod AMR system, which include the Hot Rod™ Radio Transmitter Unit, Street Machine™ Mobile Data Collector, and EZ Reader™ Software, work together to help utilities reduce the amount of time it takes to manually collect meter reads, more effectively manage water usage, and improve customer service.