Water meter

[mogga]

There's no pipe outside at one house- common supply... previous threads on stop tap in road ... In fact out of the 3 houses I'm thinking of I think only one has a solo outside stoptap....

Ah but that's not actually what happens. I was reading UU's site yesterday and the meter stays and you just go back to the old method of billing. BUT when you sell the house is then metered no choice.

Water rates 550 for a 3 bed terrace which sounds insane... so it's got to be cheaper - estimates are about 220 quid on a meter for a one person household.

I think us with a teen wouldn't save anywhere near that much - but apparently the whole family (3 houses worth) are now all considering meters.

Thanks - we're UU too.

[mogga]

Thanks

There's not enough pipe out of the ground at one place for 5" of spare pipe.. so I suspect it's a no go there.

Here I think we have tons of pipe and an outside stop tap.

[D.M.Chapman]

They are around our way now - ours was fitted a few weeks ago. Not optional.

Darren

[ARWadsworth]

I managed to talk my Grandad into having a water meter fitted some years ago. He lived on his own in a 4 bed house and it was worth him having one fitted IMHO. After the meter was fitted he asked me to have a look at it as he thought it had been incorrectly fitted.

It had indeed been incorrectly fitted. YW had fitted the meter after the T that supplied the outside tap. My Grandad laughed and said "Don't tell anyone until I am dead" as he went to fetch the lawn sprinkler and hosepipe from the garage.

Adam

[Peter Scott]

I think that there's a broader question. The water companies have been very clever at hitching a ride on the environmental movement. Not that they are clever enough to have planned it that way but some bright spark saw the chance and jumped on it.

Water is not used up like oil or gas and its use doesn't produce carbon dioxide. All that happens is that it gets dirty. With sufficient investment, the dirty water could be cleaned up and reused rather than chucked in the sea still filthy. Yes the cleaning would use some energy but relatively little so the situation is not comparable with fossil fuel burning.

Clearly the water companies don't want to make the massive investment to reuse water. As we heard on the news today they pay their shareholders double the going rate. Now water is privatised the only way to make them change their policies is public bribery. Just listen to the over-reaction to Ofwat's rules over price rises announced this morning.

Water is an essential. People should not have to economise unreasonably. People who grow their own food use more water. Even washing the crops takes more water.

One last thought. If you have a largish house you are likely to want to sell to a family with more than two people in it. Has anyone looked at whether you get a lower price for a house with a meter? I'd want to bargain over that if I was a buyer!

Peter Scott

[Tim Downie]

Sometimes they c*ck up the opposite way though. My wife's elderly aunt who lives alone had a meter fitted and then faced a bill much bigger than expected. Turned out that the main supplying her house had a branch that supplied the neighbour's house as well.

Tim

[mogga]

This is one thing we've already considered - if it's in the right place then the outdoor tap is free. *ahem* I'm sure the water board don't make this mistake very often though and of course we'd have to point it out to them.

[ARWadsworth]

You complained about that installation though:-)

Adam

[A.Clews]

Thus spake Ron O'Brien ( [e-mail]) unto the assembled multitudes:

Interesting. I volunteered for a meter three years ago and there was no charge to install it.

[Peter Johnson]

to install it.

I've not had to pay Severn Trent on two occasions I've had meters fitted. At the first house, c15 years ago, the meter was posted to me and I installed it myself. I don't know how long they did that for. The last time, 12 years ago, they did a survey and sent a plumber.

[Peter Johnson]

I sold my last house with the water meter and I don't remember the buyers being that interested in it. It certainly didn't affect the price. They are still in the house, have had two children since they moved in and have spent money on it over the years so they seem to have coped with the cost of the water.

[Man at B&Q]

Family of four in a four bed detached in a nice area - we halved our water bills by switching to a meter.

MBQ

[chris French]

In message , Peter Johnson writes

Indeed.

We sold our last house with a meter and bought a another larger house with a meter. I wasn't an issue.

Anyway, if anything, we'd probably have been even better off with the meter after moving to the new house, since larger house would have had presumably bigger water rates if not on a meter.

We had the meter installed in our old house. I was quite a lot cheaper (can't remember figures anymore). Even when we had 2 kids I still reckon it was a fair bit cheaper than the water rates would have been.

The consumption in the new house is pretty much the same as the old one.

[Peter Scott]

Seems in your case it was fine. I do just wonder if people will start to realise the downside of a meter when they look around.

Peter Scott

[Peter Scott]

yes that's a fair point about the rateable value. Perhaps I should look into it? I might be going onto mains drainage soon. If Anglian Water get it sorted. At present I only pay a modest amount for unlimited water.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I used to live in a terraced house. Next door was being gutted and moderised. They ran a new water main and connected it to their new plumbing. All well and good for them, except the rest of the terrace was fed from their original pipework and we all suddenly had no water! The guy had to start digging up the kitchen floor to find where the pipes went off to the properties on each side, and reconnect them. House changed hands a few times since then. I wonder if they've had a water meter fitted since, without realising they're supplying everyone else too?

Can properties like this have water meters properly?

[ARWadsworth]

Water supplies to terraced properties usually do not pass under a property.

But there is no logic to some water supplies. A friend phoned me up one Sunday evening to say that he could hear water hitting his floorboards.

When I arrived and lifted the carpet and the floorboards there was indeed a cold water supply (lead) that was leaking and hitting the floorboards. Neither the stoptap in the street or the stop tap in the house turned off this water supply.

Yorkshire Water sent someone round that night and the bloke that arrived used a long stick to knock the lead pipe downwards so the water leak did not hit the floorboards and then left saying that someone would be back on Tuesday as it was a Bank Holiday.

It took 3 working days for YW to find the stop tap to this lead supply. The stoptap was on a different street.

Adam

[Roger Dewhurst]

A reasonable allowance is 200 litres/person/day. This includes everything, even watering the garden.

R

[tim....]

the real issue is, do you have a garden (and do you water it).

Tim

[tim....]

not usually

tim