December 1, 2023 5:18 pm
I’m back! I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. I certainly did! I wrote about my time away in my regular weekend Opinion column for The Daily Journal, so head over there, on Saturday or later, if you are curious.
My wife and I were delighted to be able to return to our regular routine, which includes driving for Meals on Wheels every Friday. For the last several weeks we’ve taken advantage of the fact that our drive takes us right down Main Street in downtown Redwood City, where The Baker Next Door has been running a pop-up shop in front of their future storefront at 851 Main Street. They weren’t there today, however, but instead announced that they’ll be selling their bread, muffins, cookies, and other baked goods at a special holiday event being held on Saturday, December 2, at the site of another new forthcoming business: The Yard Coffeehouse. The Yard Coffeehouse will apparently be operating from the beautiful old house situated between the main branch of the Redwood City Public Library and what was Alana’s Cafe. This one:
If you are reading this on Friday (Dec. 1) or early enough on Saturday, consider dropping by The Yard; they will be having a “Festive Finds” event featuring gifts, art, food, and coffee. The event will run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., at 1018 Main St. in Redwood City. Their event timing aligns nicely with the city’s Hometown Holidays event (sponsored by Redwood City’s Downtown Business Group). That event will also be on Saturday, but from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in Courthouse Square. Hometown Holidays will include a holiday parade, live entertainment, photos with Santa, a petting zoo, carnival rides, and of course food and craft vendors. So grab the kids, and head on down!
This week, I’m writing about a web site and accompanying smartphone app that many Redwood City residents will surely want to know about. The app is called Dropcountr, and if you haven’t guessed based on the name, it monitors your household water usage. If that sounds like something you don’t care about, don’t stop reading just yet: that data allows it to alert you to potential problems, such as leaky pipes or faucets that have inadvertently been left on. Those alerts can keep you from having disastrously high (i.e., expensive) water bills, which I suspect we all care about, drought or no. And especially given that next Monday, December 4, the Redwood City Council will be considering (and likely approving) increased rates for all water customers served by Redwood City, any tools that can help ensure that we aren’t wasting water should be most welcome.
In 2015, Redwood City swapped out our old mechanical water meters with smart meters (this was about the same time that PG&E did the same for our electric and gas meters, as I recall). These “smart” water meters are of course digital, and have an antenna that allows the meter to be read remotely, without a person having to visit each house or apartment building, lift the heavy lid on the in-ground chamber in which the meter is located, wipe the meter clean, read the dial, and record the current value. I’m not sure how often the city read those mechanical meters back then, but given that Redwood City residents are billed for water every other month, the readings didn’t have to be taken more often than that. They still don’t, given that our billing cycle hasn’t changed, but the new meters appear to be read at least once a day (perhaps more), and the data that is collected contains hour-by-hour usage.
When those new meters were first installed, Redwood City made the remotely-read data available on a “My Water” web page accessible from the city’s website (you had to set up a login for that, of course). Not only could you see your hourly usage, but you could also set an alert if usage suddenly exceeded a specified threshold. I suspect very few people knew about that particular service, which is too bad. Me, I learned the value of setting those alerts the hard way: back in March of 2022 a hose in our yard was inadvertently left on for two or three days, wasting a great deal of water and causing a huge spike in our water usage (that bill ended up being about $200 higher than it should have been). Having learned my lesson, I immediately set an alert in the even such a thing ever happened again, and then gritted my teeth and paid my bill.
With the alert in place, life went back to normal, until May of this year, when I received an alert. That alert caused me to quickly check for faucets left on (none, outside or in) and then to more carefully look for evidence of leaks. My wife and I eventually found a puddle in the backyard where there shouldn’t have been one (this was later in May; we hadn’t had rain since May 4, and it wasn’t on a day when our irrigation system had run). Based on the puddle’s location we were pretty sure that the problem was a broken water line leading to our irrigation system.
First, I checked our in-ground meter.
Sure enough, the numbers were changing, even though nothing in our house should have been using water. (Don’t know how to read your water meter? I wrote about how to do so in my post Measuring Up. Although that post, written in 2015, contains some older information, it does detail all you need to know about reading your water meter.) I then shut the manual valve that supplies water to our irrigation system, and the numbers immediately stopped changing. Confident that I had not only identified the problem but also stopped it from getting worse, I closed up the meter and made arrangements to have the broken pipe dug up and repaired. Although we still did lose some water due to the pipe break (which seems to have been thanks to the root of a neighbor’s redwood tree), because of the alert the loss was nowhere near as great as before.
A few months ago Redwood City announced that they’d be shutting off My Water in favor of a new system. It seems to have taken some time to get that new system — Dropcountr — up and running, but it’s here now. They loaded about 18 months worth of historical data into the system, although I’m not sure how accurate that old data is: at first glance it doesn’t seem to match up with my actual water bills very well. However, as long as it shows good, accurate data going forward — and sends alerts at the appropriate times — I’ll be satisfied. And I like that in addition to accessing the data and settings from the website, there are apps for iOS and Android smartphones, making it more convenient than the old system.
You do need to sign up for a free Dropcountr account through Redwood City’s website, using this link and information from your water bill. Once you have created your account, go to Settings (if you are in a web browser) or My Account (if you are in the app) and choose Site Profile. Fill in the specifics for your particular household so it can estimate (very roughly) how much water you should be using. Then, click on Notifications and enable all of the notifications that seem useful to you. Personally, I erred on the side of too many notifications, rather than too few — I can always turn things off later (but I’ve been using Dropcountr for two weeks or so and have yet to receive any, so that’s good).
That’s it! You can now view your usage for the year, for any given month, or for individual days (daily water use shows your usage hour by hour). And take note of the bar graphs that compare your usage to that of “efficient households” and “similar households”: those can be quite eye-opening.
As you’ve probably seen by now — or as you will, if you head downtown on Saturday to participate in Hometown Holidays — the city has been busy putting up a number of holiday decorations. Courthouse Square is looking particularly festive this year.
Nearby, I was delighted to see that the long-empty storefront at 2363 Broadway is no longer going to be empty: the space between Teaspoon (on the left) and Broadway Masala (on the right) has a sign in the window announcing that it will soon be a Site for Sore Eyes outlet, and work seems to be underway on renovating the store’s interior.
I take this as a good sign (no pun intended) for the future of Redwood City’s downtown. Although we don’t actually have all that many empty storefronts right now, most of downtown Redwood City’s retail spaces seem to be filled with restaurants and other food service businesses. Thus, the addition of Site for Sore Eyes (which sells eyeglasses and contact lenses, and apparently does eye exams as well) serves as a slight, but welcome, tip of the scales back towards more traditional retail.
Finally, the city is looking to fill three open partial-term seats (expiring may 31, 2026) on the Architectural Advisory Committee (AAC), and one partial-term seat (expiring June 30, 2026) on the Planning Commission. AAC members must be licensed architects or landscape architects working in the city (or its “sphere of influence”). Planning Commission members, on the other hand, simply need to be US citizens, 18 years of age or older, and residents of incorporated Redwood City. If you qualify for either body, and are at all interested, do consider filling out the online application form. The deadline for the Planning Commission seat is Sunday, December 17, at 11:59 p.m. As for the ACC positions, it appears that there is no hard deadline: applications will be accepted on an ongoing basis. Note that ACC members are interviewed and selected by the Planning Commission.
And speaking of the Planning Commission, next Tuesday, December 5, that body will be considering and potentially approving two sizable additions to the Stanford in Redwood City campus. One, Block C, would see the addition of two 125,000-square-foot, five-story office buildings, a relatively small (4,000 square feet) “amenity building” and a six-level parking structure to the set of buildings between Broadway and Bay Road. The other, Block E, would replace two existing buildings with one large (265,000 square feet, nine stories towards the back but only three stories out by the street) medical office building plus a two-level parking garage. These would be located on the medical side of Stanford’s Redwood City campus, between Broadway and Highway 101. The new medical office building would be connected to one of the existing buildings via a skybridge, as shown in this rendering:
I’ll write about these projects in more detail in a future post (likely, next week, especially if the Planning Commission does indeed approve them), but I wanted to mention them now so that anyone who wanted to attend the meeting and perhaps express an opinion has sufficient warning. Tuesday’s meeting is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m., in the Redwood City Council Chambers at 1017 Middlefield Road. Written comments can be submitted in advance (pc@redwoodcity.org), but must be received by 5 p.m. on the day of the meeting. Oral comments can only be delivered by those physically in attendance: although you can observe the meeting remotely (redwoodcity.zoom.us with Meeting ID: 930 4536 6921), you cannot use that mechanism to comment on the proceedings.
Posted by Greg
Categories: Walking Redwood City
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So happy to see that old yellow house by the downtown library is being saved and re-purposed. It’s so beautiful. Downtown Redwood City used to have cute little homes and this is one of the few left.
By Eileen on December 2, 2023 at 12:31 pm
For those folks who live in areas without city enabled tools, there are commercial monitoring products available too. As a swimming pool owner, I have used Flume since a similar catastrophic leak a few years back. It’s sensitive enough to show evaporation refill in the pool, and similarly has caught multiple irrigation valve failures.
By davethetallguy on December 2, 2023 at 8:49 am
Indeed, I understand that other peninsula cities aren’t providing something like this for their citizens. So that’s a great suggestion. Thanks!
By Greg on December 2, 2023 at 8:54 am
Redwood City residents can get a one or two lifetime adjustments to your redwood water bill due to leaks issues. Contact rwc water dept for details
By afriedman21 on December 1, 2023 at 7:14 pm
Good to know. Thanks!
By Greg on December 2, 2023 at 8:55 am