Water meter query

[The Medway Handyman]

My sister in law had a water meter fitted just over a month ago in order to save money - just her & MIL in granny annex.

Apparently they wait a month & ask you to set up a DD after evaluating the months usage. This turned out to be over twice what her old water rates were.

Her son had a look & saw the meter turning when nothing was using water & tracked it down to the cistern in the granny annex on permanent internal overflow. Gran being a bit mutton never heard it.

Sorted that out & the meter was still moving, but slower. Took a look at the upstairs WC cistern, that had obviously been overflowing for ages, float had a hole in it, half full of water.

Nobody had noticed that because the external overflow seems to have been plumbed into the soil stack when the Granny annex was built 7 years ago. Sorted that & the meter has almost stopped moving - but it still moves albeit by a barely perceptible amount. You can see the central cog moving around - so slowly that its like one of those 'stare at the dots & they appear to move' optical illusions.

So, two questions; I thought the point of external overflows was that they alerted people to a fault? Don't they have to be 'noticeable' or 'visible'?

And do water meter all exhibit this very, very slow turning?

[ARWadsworth]

I have never seen them turn when they are not using water. What happpens when you turn the house stoptap off?

Adam

[Fred]

In fact of these sort of mechanical meters tend to need a small flow rate to overcome the small sticktion(sp?) they have.

[Bob Minchin]

All domestic meters should be read weekly and the results logged. In that way you can easily tell when a problem starts to occur. If I ever see our water meter creeping I go round and find the culprit water flow. I've never seen ours creep without reason. If your sister keeps a weekly log for a few months the water board ought to accept this as justification for reducing the DD. Check also to see where her rainwater goes. If it is all into soakaways then a rebate of some of the standing charge might be due. I got one a few years back.

Bob

[chrisj.doran]

At the risk of boring people because I've said this here several times before... They fitted mine with the wrong size coupling giving a small leak which became a significantly larger leak late at night, presumably due to pressure/local usage changes. Check it at midnight, not just during the day. And, of course, turn off the house stopcock to narrow it down.

Chris

[thescullster]

"The Medway Handyman" wrote

Certainly if you have water storage tank(s), the float valves can take forever to finally stop dripping which will give you meter creap. As other have said though, this will be diagnosed/eliminated by either checking all float filled reservoirs are satisfied and not dripping, or turning off the internal stop tap (provided this is known to give 100% shut-off)

Phil

[ransley]

It should only turn when you use water

[PeterC]

ISTR that the correct term is 'warning pipe' and that it should be obvious if there's overflow.

Mate's DHW cistern went in to the guttering and the downpipes in to the ground! What about modern WC pans? - a very small flow down the back might be noticeable only when a stain develops.