More than half of Oahu’s residential water customers can expect a visit during the next year from a city contractor tasked with swapping out equipment from their water meter reader boxes near or on their properties.

Approximately 80,000 automated meter-reading transponder units are being replaced islandwide. The transponder units, which are in the water meter boxes that typically are in the public right of way in the front of people’s houses, electronically record the amounts of water used by customers and then transmit that information wirelessly to human BWS readers who drive around and must be in the meters’ vicinity.

Royal Contracting Co. was awarded the $5 million contract. Customers will be notified one to two weeks prior to the replacement work taking place in their neighborhoods. Notification will be done either in person or with door hanger cards.

In cases where meter boxes are on private property, arrangements will be made with individual customers in advance for the contractors to gain access to their boxes.

Switching out the units typically takes 15 to 20 minutes, BWS officials said. The work will take place between 7:30 a.m. and 10:30 p.m. daily, except on state highways where work is allowed only until 3:30 p.m. Authorized workers for Royal Contracting and EKNA Services, the project’s construction managers, will wear yellow vests bearing the logos of their companies. Project financing is through the water agency’s capital improvements budget, so water customers should not be approached for payment.

Water service is not shut off during the conversions.

About 47,000 other transponder units already were previously swapped out under a pilot project, BWS officials said. The city currently has 151,848 residential customers.

BWS Water Manager Ernest Lau said many of the transponders have exceeded their service life and that the new units will help increase the efficiency of the automated meter reading process. The agency expects read rates of 95% or higher with the new responders, up from the current 85%.

“With the higher efficiency, we will be able to get the reads and maybe be able to save our customers some funds by doing it more efficiently and with less resources,” Lau said.

Before transponders and drive-by readings replaced manual readings in the early 2000s, “the old style was, the meter reader would have to walk up to the meter, open up the cover, flip the dial open and write (the reading) in a book.”

For more information, go to hbws.me/mxu, email ContactUs@hbws.org or call 748-6500.

When reads can’t be collected through responders, BWS workers need to obtain manual readings from the meters, which requires additional time and effort, BWS officials said.