HandyDadTv youtube flow meter broke

Here’s what can happen when feezing breaks the water meter. Crack in battery through the seems. Winterization remains important!

We see this type of thing happen to brass backflow assemblies all the time here in Arizona. About once a year, we get a good freeze, and it never fails that there is a flood (no pun intended) of cracked backflows.

Freezing water is a powerful force!

The interesting part is he said that he blew out his lines and didn’t understand how water could remain. That being said, I am still looking for a good winterization solution akin to an insulated spigot bib to cover and wrap the water meter. Any ideas would be appreciated.

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Here is my question - How hard is it going to be to replace the flow meter? As the shark bite fittings can’t be easily removed, can I assume I will have to cut the whole thing out and put in a new pvc pipe? While Rachio gives us nice and simple instructions to install the flow meter, I am pretty sure they are going to have people complain about the difficulty to replace them should issues described by HandyDadTv occur. Do we have any idea what the life expectancy of the flow meter is? I thought I read that it was 2 years but thankfully I found that it was only for the batteries (thought the warranty is only good for 2 years as well).

There is no reason a vortex meter can’t last for a decade or more if you don’t let it freeze with water inside.

I advised here a solution fix, if outsides of meter are just bit bigger, you could replace very easily.