Plumber Arlington VA: What the County Actually Bills You For
Arlington is one of the very few places on this site where the season a pipe fails in changes the bill more than the size of the failure does. The County bills sewer by volume, at a rate more than twice the first tier of water, and then caps that sewer volume at your winter water use. A leak in July runs into that cap and lands almost entirely on the water side. The same leak in January has nothing holding it down.
This page is built from Arlington County published rate tables, its published leak adjustment rules, its published water quality averages and its published sewer maintenance programme. Every figure below is the County own. Where we have done arithmetic on those figures, we say so in the sentence that contains it. Where the County does not publish something, we say that too rather than filling the gap with a plausible number.
Nothing here describes an office, a crew, a response time or a guarantee of ours in Arlington. What it describes is the local rule set, because in this county the rule set is unusual enough that knowing it changes what you should do first.
The Rate Structure
Sewer costs more per thousand gallons than water does
Arlington bills single family and duplex homes quarterly for water, sewer and refuse together. For the year running 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027 the residential water base charge is $17.51 a quarter and the sewer base charge is $13.98 a quarter. On top of those, water is tiered: $4.73 per thousand gallons for the first 9,000 gallons in the quarter, then $7.57 per thousand gallons above that. Sewer is a single rate of $10.48 per thousand gallons.
Read those three volume numbers next to each other, because the ordering is the whole story. The sewer rate is higher than either water tier. Our arithmetic on the County figures: sewer at $10.48 is about 2.2 times the first water tier and about 1.4 times the second. In most cities on this site, water is the expensive half of a leak. In Arlington it is not.
The previous year, 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026, ran at $16.82 water base, $13.98 sewer base, $4.54 and $7.27 for the two water tiers and the same $10.48 sewer rate. So the sewer volume rate and the sewer base charge both held flat across the increase while water rose.
The adopted residential table, and what a normal quarter looks like
| Residential charge | 1 Jul 2025 to 30 Jun 2026 | 1 Jul 2026 to 30 Jun 2027 |
|---|---|---|
| Water base charge, quarterly | $16.82 | $17.51 |
| Sewer base charge, quarterly | $13.98 | $13.98 |
| Water use under 9,000 gallons | $4.54 per 1,000 gal | $4.73 per 1,000 gal |
| Water use 9,000 gallons and above | $7.27 per 1,000 gal | $7.57 per 1,000 gal |
| Sewer use, capped at winter consumption | $10.48 per 1,000 gal | $10.48 per 1,000 gal |
| Annual household solid waste rate | $415.75 | $439.27 |
The County publishes its own worked example and it is worth repeating exactly. A household using 12,000 gallons in a quarter pays $4.73 for each of the first nine thousand, which is $42.57, and $7.57 for each of the remaining three thousand, which is $22.71. The volumetric water charge is $65.28. Base charges and the sewer volume charge sit on top of that.
Apartments and commercial premises are billed monthly instead of quarterly and on a flat water rate rather than a tiered one. Multi family pays a $12.50 monthly water base, a $9.93 monthly sewer base and $5.62 per thousand gallons of water. Commercial pays the same two base charges and $6.09 per thousand gallons. Both pay the same $10.48 sewer rate as everybody else.
The account fees are short and worth knowing before you need them. A new account costs $40. Disconnecting service is free and reconnecting costs $25. A returned payment costs $50. Asking the County to test your meter costs $75, which becomes relevant later on this page.
Why the calendar decides half of what a leak costs
Arlington does not bill sewer on the water you used this quarter. It bills sewer on the lower of two numbers: your winter water consumption, or your current water consumption. The County explains the logic plainly. Water used in the winter months is mostly water that goes back down a drain, because almost nobody is irrigating a lawn in February, so winter use is treated as the best available estimate of how much wastewater you actually generate.
That is a fair rule for irrigation and it is the reason your August sprinkler bill does not arrive with a matching sewer charge. It has a second effect the County does not spell out, and it is the single most useful thing to understand about plumbing costs in this county.
Here is what that difference is worth, using the County own leak figures and our own multiplication. Arlington states that a continuously running toilet wastes between 1,000 and 4,000 gallons a day. Take the bottom of that range, 1,000 gallons a day, for a ninety day quarter. That is 90,000 gallons, or 90 thousand gallon units.
On the water side that is nine units at $4.73, which is $42.57, plus eighty one units at $7.57, which is $613.17. Water alone comes to $655.74. If the leak ran in summer and the sewer cap held at a normal winter reading, that is roughly the whole bill shock.
If the same leak ran through the winter period, our reading is that the sewer side is not held down, and ninety units at $10.48 adds $943.20. The same toilet, the same ninety days, comes to about $1,599 instead of about $656. The plumbing is identical. The month is not.
We refuse to state which months Arlington treats as the winter period, because the rates page does not publish them and we are not going to guess at a date range that changes a bill by nine hundred dollars. Call the Customer Contact Center on 703-228-5000 and ask which billing period sets your cap. It is a two minute question with a large answer.
The Leak Adjustment
The credit depends on which side of the wall the pipe broke
Arlington will adjust a bill for a leak, and the rules are published rather than discretionary. For a leak inside your home or building, the County credits 50 per cent of the excess water charges and 50 per cent of the excess sewer charges, measured against your own historical consumption.
For an underground leak between the water meter and your building, the County credits 50 per cent of the excess water and 100 per cent of the excess sewer. All of it. The reasoning is sound and it is the reason to know which kind of leak you have before you call: water leaking from a buried service line never entered the sewer system, so charging you sewer on it was never right.
On the winter numbers above, that distinction is worth $943.20 on its own. An underground service line leak gets the whole sewer excess back. The identical volume leaking from a toilet upstairs gets half of it back.
There is a clock on one side only. The County states that customers are eligible for a leak adjustment once every five years for leaks that occur inside the house or building. The published wording attaches that limit to interior leaks. If you are close to that five year window, confirm your own position with the County before you rely on it.
What the County needs before it will credit anything
- Repair the leak promptly and properly once it is detected. Prompt repair is the first condition, not a courtesy.
- Provide proof that the repairs were made. The County names a plumber invoice or a receipt as the example of acceptable proof.
- Submit the correct form. There is a printable leak adjustment form and an online route.
- Understand that the County will not adjust an account at all unless it finds clear evidence either that a meter was misread or that a leak existed on your side of the meter and you meet the criteria.
The order matters more than it looks. The credit is conditioned on a repair that has already happened and can be evidenced. Waiting to see whether the County will pay before you fix the pipe inverts the process and forfeits the adjustment, and it also keeps the meter turning at $10.48 a thousand gallons on the sewer side while you wait.
Before any of that, Arlington offers two free checks. It automatically re-reads meters that show a significant jump since the last reading, and it does that before bills go out. And it will send someone to perform a high use investigation on request, on 703-228-5000. Be present for it, because the County states plainly that its personnel are not authorised to enter your home, and you will be asked to shut the main valve so an underground leak can be ruled in or out.
The honest limit of that free visit is published too: it can only identify a leak present at the moment of the visit, so an intermittent leak may not show. That is the point at which a paid leak detection visit stops being optional, because an intermittent leak is precisely the kind that runs up a quarter of billing without ever announcing itself.
A new meter can raise your bill without anything changing in your house
Arlington publishes something most utilities leave unsaid. Its water meters, as they age, tend to fail slow rather than fast. That means an old meter under-reads and quietly bills you for less water than you actually used. The County estimates that 70 per cent of all residential meters in the County that are more than ten years old under-read consumption.
The consequence is stated by the County itself: when an old meter is replaced with a new one, your water and sewer charges may rise because the readings are now more accurate. Nothing has changed indoors. The measurement got honest.
This is worth knowing in a county with a lot of long tenure ownership, because it explains a step change in a bill that has no plumbing cause and prevents an expensive hunt for a leak that is not there. It also cuts the other way. If you genuinely suspect the meter, a meter test costs $75, and the County lists a faulty meter as one of the reasons a bill can be high.
The scale of ordinary domestic waste is published too and it is a useful calibration. A faucet that drips once a second wastes 8.6 gallons a day, which is almost 800 gallons a quarter. On the current rates our arithmetic makes that about $3.78 of water and about $8.38 of sewer, so around twelve dollars a quarter, and note again that the sewer half is the bigger half. A running toilet is in a different league entirely at 1,000 to 4,000 gallons a day.
Toilets, water heaters, in line humidifiers and irrigation systems are the four sources the County names as common. Three of those four are invisible from inside the house until the bill arrives, which is the argument for reading your own meter twice a year rather than waiting.
The Water Itself
Two systems, two reports, and one address that decides which is yours
Most of Arlington drinks water from the County system. But the Willston Pressure Zone does not. Arlington purchases water for that zone from Fairfax Water, which in turn takes its water from the Washington Aqueduct Division of the Army Corps of Engineers. The County classifies the zone as a consecutive water system requiring its own sampling and monitoring, and it publishes a separate annual water quality report for it going back to 2008.
If you live in that zone, the County own instruction is to reference the Willston reports rather than the countywide ones. That is a genuine structural split inside a single small jurisdiction and it is the sort of thing that makes a generic answer wrong for a specific street.
The countywide 2025 average figures are published in plain text. Hardness is 8 grains per gallon, or 142 milligrams per litre. pH is 7.5. The chloramine residual is 2.1 milligrams per litre. Fluoride is 0.7 parts per million and sodium is 34 parts per million. Calcium is 41 milligrams per litre, magnesium 9, chloride 38 and sulfate 48.
What 8 grains and a chloramine residual mean for the hardware
Eight grains per gallon puts Arlington water in the hard band on the conventional scale, though not extreme. That is enough to matter to a water heater over a decade and enough to explain scale on fixtures and aerators, and it is the number to quote to anyone selling you a softener so that the conversation starts from a measurement rather than from a sales pitch.
The chloramine residual is the more useful number for anyone choosing parts. Arlington disinfects with chloramine rather than free chlorine, and chloramine is well known to be harder on certain rubber compounds than chlorine is. That is a materials selection question for washers, flexible connectors and toilet flappers rather than a health question, and it is worth raising with whoever is fitting them.
We are deliberately not converting any of these numbers into a health statement. The County publishes a full Consumer Confidence Report every year for both systems as required by the Safe Drinking Water Act, along with separate information about PFAS, and those documents are the place for that. Printed copies are available on 703-228-6555.
One practical note the County adds for anyone managing a building: property managers of multi family homes are asked to post the report in a public area of the building. If you rent in Arlington and have never seen one, that is a reasonable thing to ask for.
The Sewer System
465 miles of public pipe, and none of it is yours
The Arlington sanitary sewer system runs to roughly 465 miles of pipe and 13 lift stations, all of it feeding the Water Pollution Control Plant. Most of it works on gravity. Where the terrain will not allow a continuous fall, a lift station pumps the flow back up to a height from which it can run downhill again.
The County describes the connection point precisely, and the wording is the part to hold on to: wastewater enters those public pipes from the private sanitary laterals that connect properties to the sewer. The lateral is private. Everything the County does to maintain the system stops where your lateral starts.
And it does a great deal. Every sanitary sewer main is flushed with a high pressure water jet at least once every four years under the grid programme. Known trouble spots are revisited on a three or six month cycle. Known grease spots are on the same cycle and get a grease emulsifier as well as a flush. Mains prone to root intrusion are cut annually with a mechanical saw, flushed, then treated with a herbicidal foam.
The inspection and renewal programme, and the line where it stops
The County owns two television inspection trucks. A carriage mounted camera goes down a manhole and up a main, recording video that is analysed later to find cracks, dislodged joints, flow problems and, notably, the locations of house lateral connections. On the renewal side, the capital programme relines about 1.5 per cent of the system every year, which the County puts at roughly seven miles of pipe annually, alongside a separate manhole rehabilitation programme.
On the storm side, the County reports cleaning over 7,000 catch basins in one fiscal year out of a total of about 10,000 in the County. That is a maintained system by any standard.
The causes the County lists for a backup are the familiar four and they map neatly onto what is worth doing preventively. Tree roots entering through pipe joints. Grease from cooking, which coagulates in the cooler sewer water and sticks to pipe walls. Debris such as rags and toys, where one stuck item collects others behind it. And broken lines caused by construction or by heavy equipment driving over the run.
Three of those four are addressable before they become an emergency. Roots and grease respond to scheduled drain cleaning on the private side of the connection, exactly as they respond to the County programme on the public side. A camera survey finds the broken or root invaded segment that will eventually need sewer line repair. Only the fourth, an unlucky excavator, arrives without warning.
On fats, oils, grease and wipes the County is blunt, and its wording is worth quoting because it is aimed at exactly the habit that causes the calls. Can it, cool it, throw it away. And on wipes: even if it is labelled as flushable, never flush it. Report a sewer or water emergency on the 24 hour line, 703-228-6555.
Permits and Inspections
The permit rule has a clean line through it, and gas is on the wrong side
Arlington requires a plumbing or gas permit for adding, removing or relocating fixtures, appliances or piping. That is the general rule. The exemption is narrow and specific: on equipment not fuelled by gas, replacing a fixture, appliance or pipe with the same type, in the same size, in the same location does not require a permit.
Gas is treated differently and the County says so in the same breath. Replacing fixtures and other elements on gas fuelled equipment requires a permit and inspections, full stop. There is no like for like exemption on the gas side.
There is a further condition on fuel burning appliances that catches people out on a straight replacement. On replacing or newly installing any fuel burning appliance or equipment in an existing building, an inspection must confirm the connected vent or chimney system is correctly sized to the building code and is clean, unobstructed and in operable condition. A completed Chimney Vent Certification form is submitted through the revision process.
Three details that decide how long the paperwork takes
- Residential or commercial. The County warns that some residential properties are classed as commercial under the Building Code and therefore need a commercial permit. Establish which you are before you file.
- Fixture counts get a second review. Depending on the scope, a fixture count may be required, and many permits including plumbing fixtures need additional review by the Department of Environmental Services to validate the drainage fixture units.
- Backflow devices add a step at the end. An application that includes a backflow device requires a final cross connection inspection before the plumbing permit can be finaled, and that inspection cannot be scheduled until a cross connection application has been submitted.
- Plans follow the building permit. If there is an associated building permit, the plumbing or gas plans go in under it rather than separately.
Applications go through Permit Arlington online. Further exemptions from the permit requirement are set out in section 108.2 of the Building Code, and if you are unsure whether your job needs one, the Inspection Services Division answers that question directly on 703-228-3800.
The backflow detail is the one that most often surprises people, because it means the permit is not closed when the plumbing work is finished. It is closed when a separate cross connection inspection has happened, and that inspection has its own prerequisite application. Sequencing it early is the difference between a permit that finals on time and one that sits open.
Virginia issues plumbing licences at state level through the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, so the tradesperson credential is a statewide one and the County layer here is permitting and inspection rather than licensing. Verify a licence on the state register before work starts, whoever you hire.
How Arlington compares with the other cities documented on this site
This site has now documented enough municipal billing structures to make the comparison useful rather than decorative, because the same leak genuinely costs different money in different places for structural reasons.
Arlington and Alpharetta both use a winter measurement to hold sewer down, which makes them cousins. The difference is that Alpharetta measures its water tiers against a winter average as well, while Arlington tiers water on a flat 9,000 gallon threshold and reserves the winter logic for sewer alone.
Against St Louis the contrast is total. Most St Louis homes are not metered at all, and both the water bill and the sewer bill are computed by counting rooms, baths, water closets and showers, so a running toilet there costs nothing and owning the toilet is what costs. In Arlington every gallon is measured and a running toilet is the single most expensive thing that can quietly happen to you.
The two positions produce opposite advice from the same trade. In St Louis the money question is how many fixtures you install. In Arlington it is how fast you notice. More Virginia cities are covered from the Virginia plumbing hub, including Richmond, and the state page carries the statewide licensing and code position that applies here.
Arlington neighbourhoods and areas covered by the rules on this page include Rosslyn, Clarendon, Courthouse, Ballston, Virginia Square, Crystal City, Pentagon City, Shirlington, Westover, Cherrydale, Lyon Village, Lyon Park, Aurora Highlands, Columbia Pike, Green Valley, Douglas Park, Bluemont, Ashton Heights, Arlington Ridge, Fairlington, Waverly Hills, Donaldson Run, Yorktown, Williamsburg, Old Glebe, Arlington Forest, Barcroft, Glencarlyn, Claremont, Penrose and Foxcroft Heights. If your address falls inside the Willston Pressure Zone, remember that your water quality report is the separate one.
For a burst line, a backing up lateral or anything actively running, the County 24 hour water and sewer line is 703-228-6555, and our own emergency plumbing page sets out what to shut off and in what order while you wait.
Plumbing in Arlington, Virginia: Straight Answers
Every figure below is Arlington County published data. Where the arithmetic is ours, the answer says so.
Because the sewer volume rate is higher than either water tier. Arlington charges $10.48 per thousand gallons of sewer against $4.73 for the first 9,000 gallons of water and $7.57 above that. Our arithmetic on those published figures makes sewer about 2.2 times the first water tier. On a normal quarter with no leak, the sewer line on your bill can easily be the larger one.
Not normally. Arlington estimates sewer generation as the lower of your winter water consumption or your current water consumption, precisely so that irrigation water that never returns to the sewer is not billed as though it did. That is the published mechanism. What the rates page does not publish is which months count as the winter period, so confirm that with the County on 703-228-5000 rather than assuming.
It depends entirely on where the pipe was. For a leak inside the home or building, Arlington credits 50 per cent of the excess water charges and 50 per cent of the excess sewer charges against your historical consumption. For an underground leak between the meter and the building, it credits 50 per cent of the excess water and 100 per cent of the excess sewer, because that water never entered the sewer. Interior leaks are limited to one adjustment every five years.
Three things, in this order. Repair the leak promptly and properly once it is found. Provide proof the repair happened, and the County names a plumber invoice or receipt as its example. Then submit the leak adjustment form. The County states it will not adjust an account without clear evidence of either a misread meter or a qualifying leak on your side of the meter, so the receipt is not a formality.
Arlington lists five: a change in your water use pattern, a leak on your side of the meter, a misread meter, a faulty meter, and more accurate readings from a newly replaced meter. That last one is real and the County quantifies it, estimating that 70 per cent of residential meters over ten years old under-read consumption. A new meter can raise a bill with nothing wrong in the house.
Yes, on request. Call 703-228-5000 for a high use investigation. Be present, because County personnel are not authorised to enter your home and you will be asked to shut the main valve so an underground leak can be ruled out. The published limitation is that the visit can only find a leak that is running at that moment, so an intermittent leak may pass the test and still be costing you.
You are. The County describes the pipes carrying wastewater into the public system as private sanitary laterals, and it states directly that when sewer pipes back up on private property the homeowner or business owner is responsible for the cleanup. The County jets, televises and relines its own mains on published cycles. None of that programme covers your lateral.
Generally no, if it is not gas fuelled. Replacing a fixture, appliance or pipe with the same type, size and location on non gas equipment is exempt. Adding, removing or relocating anything requires a permit. And on gas fuelled equipment there is no like for like exemption at all, so replacing elements there requires a permit and inspections. Section 108.2 of the Building Code holds the further exemptions, and Inspection Services will confirm on 703-228-3800.
Most often because a backflow device is on the application. Arlington requires a final cross connection inspection before a plumbing permit including a backflow device can be finaled, and that inspection cannot even be scheduled until a separate cross connection application has been submitted. It is a sequencing problem rather than a workmanship problem, and it is avoidable by filing the cross connection application early.
The 2025 County average is 8 grains per gallon, which is 142 milligrams per litre, with a pH of 7.5. That is hard enough to scale fixtures and to matter to a water heater over years. The other number worth knowing is the chloramine residual of 2.1 milligrams per litre, because chloramine disinfection is harder on some rubber compounds than free chlorine, which is a parts selection point for washers, flexible connectors and flappers.
Because the Willston Pressure Zone is supplied differently. Arlington buys that zone’s water from Fairfax Water, which draws from the Washington Aqueduct Division of the Army Corps of Engineers, and the County classifies it as a consecutive water system needing its own sampling and monitoring. If your address is in that zone, the County instruction is to use the Willston reports rather than the countywide ones.
The County publishes the volume: a faucet dripping once a second wastes 8.6 gallons a day, almost 800 gallons a quarter. Our arithmetic on the current rates makes that roughly $3.78 of water and roughly $8.38 of sewer, so about twelve dollars a quarter. Small. The reason to fix it anyway is that the same inattention applied to a running toilet, at 1,000 to 4,000 gallons a day, is a three figure or four figure number.
Where every figure on this page came from
All residential, multi family and commercial rate figures, the two tier residential water structure, the 9,000 gallon threshold, the sewer rate, the base charges, the annual household solid waste rate, the account fees and the County own 12,000 gallon worked example come from the Arlington County water, sewer and refuse rates page, covering the adopted structure for 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026 and 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027.
The same page is the source for the seasonal sewer adjustment mechanism, including the statement that sewer generation is estimated at the lower of winter water consumption or current water consumption, and for the quarterly billing cycle for single family and duplex homes against monthly billing for multi family and commercial premises.
The leak adjustment percentages, the distinction between interior leaks and underground leaks between the meter and the building, the once every five years limit on interior leaks, the three eligibility conditions, the high use investigation and its stated limitation, the automatic re-read policy, the five listed causes of a high bill and the estimate that 70 per cent of residential meters over ten years old under-read all come from the County Resolve High Bills page.
The running toilet range of 1,000 to 4,000 gallons a day and the dripping faucet figure of 8.6 gallons a day and almost 800 gallons a quarter are the County own figures from the same page, as is the list of toilets, water heaters, in line humidifiers and irrigation systems as common leak sources.
The 2025 average hardness of 8 grains per gallon and 142 milligrams per litre, the pH of 7.5, the chloramine residual of 2.1, fluoride 0.7, sodium 34, nickel 0.9 parts per billion, calcium 41, chloride 38, magnesium 9 and sulfate 48, together with the Willston Pressure Zone description, its Fairfax Water supply, the Washington Aqueduct Division of the Army Corps of Engineers and the consecutive water system classification, come from the County Water Quality Reports page.
The approximately 465 miles of sanitary sewer, the 13 lift stations, the Water Pollution Control Plant, the gravity description, the private sanitary lateral wording and the four listed causes of a sewer backup come from the County Sewer page. The four year grid jetting cycle, the three and six month trouble spot and grease spot cycles, the grease emulsifier, the annual root cutting with mechanical saw and herbicidal foam, the two television inspection trucks, the relining of about 1.5 per cent or seven miles of pipe a year, the manhole rehabilitation programme and the catch basin cleaning figures come from the Sewer Maintenance page.
The statement that the homeowner or business owner is responsible for cleanup when sewer pipes back up on private property, and the fats, oils, grease and wipes guidance including the instruction never to flush wipes labelled flushable, come from the County Fats, Oils, Grease and Wipes page.
The permit rule, the same type and size and location exemption for non gas equipment, the absence of that exemption for gas fuelled equipment, the reference to section 108.2 of the Building Code, the Chimney Vent Certification requirement, the drainage fixture unit review by the Department of Environmental Services, the residential versus commercial classification warning, the backflow and cross connection final inspection sequence and the Permit Arlington submission route come from the County Plumbing and Gas Permit page.
Every telephone number quoted is published by Arlington County: the Customer Contact Center on 703-228-5000 operating Monday to Friday, 7am to 7pm; the 24 hour water and sewer emergency line on 703-228-6555; and Inspection Services on 703-228-3800.
The arithmetic on this page is ours and is labelled as ours in the copy as well as here. That the sewer rate is about 2.2 times the first water tier is our division. The ninety day, ninety thousand gallon leak scenario and its $655.74 water figure, its $943.20 sewer figure and its roughly $1,599 total are our multiplication of the County rate table by the bottom of the County own running toilet range. The dripping faucet cost of about twelve dollars a quarter is ours on the same basis.
Our reading that a leak running during the winter measurement period is not held down by the cap, because the inflated reading is itself the winter reading, is stated in the copy as our reading of the published rule and is not a County statement. It is flagged as such because it materially changes the cost of a leak.
Refused and left blank rather than estimated: which calendar months Arlington treats as the winter measurement period, because the rates page does not publish them; every plumbing and gas permit fee and plan review fee, because the fee schedule was not among the pages read; whether the five year leak adjustment clock applies to underground leaks as well as interior ones, because the published wording attaches it only to interior leaks and silence is not an answer; the PFAS results, which sit in a separate document not opened; and the boundary of the Willston Pressure Zone, which is not described on the pages read.
No office, address, crew, response time, guarantee or coverage claim of ours is stated for Arlington, and no testimonial or performance statistic appears anywhere above. Rates, ordinances and programmes change, and the County revises rates on a published annual cycle beginning 1 July, so confirm current requirements with Arlington County before relying on anything here.