Anyone know if I can briefly disconnect my outside water meter please?

snipped-for-privacy@albion-manufacturing.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

By "Outside Meter" do you mean the electronic sensor that they take the readings from?

Cable on a water meter?

I have no cable and mine is in the street anyway. Brian

Mine too, but, particularly in winter, it is often under a couple of feet of muddy water, so possibly a remote reading meter is a good idea.

Colin Bignell

Essentially - can I feed a power cable through the same hole in a wall as another cable?

Why would you need to disconnect the other cable? How does disconnecting it make the hole through the wall any bigger? If the hole is big enough to feed two cables through, it's big enough to feed two cables through.

However, grouping regs specify that mains cable must not be grouped with other cables that are insulated to a lower voltage, so if this other cable is, eg a 5v signal cable then it won't be insulated to allow it to be grouped with a mains cable. Rule of thumb is that you need a cable's width gap between cables.

A simple way of "ungrouping" the cables is to slit a plastic mains conduit down the side so you can pop it over the signal cable and feed it through the hole to give it protection. That may also be the easiest way of getting your mains cable through as well, tap an empty conduit through the hole in the wall next to the other one to give you a clear passage.

jgh

Holes usually aren't too hard to drill either. ;-)

Tim

Thanks very much JGH.

It sounds as though it will be easier to drill another hole.

I cannot fit two cables through the hole unless I open it up to a larger diameter. Which is why I am asking if I can disconnect.

If wiring regs don't allow two cables through the same hole in this manner then I shouldn't do it anyway. The water meter must be low voltage.

I suspect the water company won't allow disconnection unless done by an engineer at cost anyway.

Thanks and Happy Christmas!! :-)

Yes you are quite right Tim.... just rather have one hole than two for neatness.

But looks like it'll be easier to drill another.

Thanks for all the replies! :-)

I have not seen water meters that required an electrical supply before. Even if you have such a beast, it presumably recovers from a power cut without issue, so I can't see that interrupting it briefly would make any difference.

This sounds more like a remote reading device than a meter in the normal sense?

Why would you need to disconnect to pass an extra cable through anyway?

Rule no 1. Just do it and never tell the utility company Rule no 2. If if goes wrong then just say "It was like that when I got here"

Yes, it will just be a circular object against which the water company place their data collection device when reading the meter. I can't see how the water company will ever know that you've disconnected it - as long as it's reconnected before they next come to read the meter.

The circular object will cover the outside of the hole, and would need to be removed to "get at" the hole. But, as others have said, fitting a mains cable in close proximity to this signal wire may not be a good idea.

I would have thought they would, at the very least, have anti-tamper seals, to stop people disconnecting the meter in order to reduce their bill.

Colin Bignell

On Wednesday 18 December 2013 08:45 Nightjar wrote in uk.d-i-y:

It's almost certainly just an RF device - the "smarts" including the current consumption will be in the meter.

I think the water company described it as an 'out reader'.

It was easy to remove the cover on the unit and access the internal connections.

However have decided to take advice given and not have a mains cable next to a low voltage signal cable.

Thanks all!

ITYM the last consumption reading before somebody disconnected the transmitter and stopped it updating the meter.

Colin Bignell

On Wednesday 18 December 2013 15:41 Nightjar wrote in uk.d-i-y:

why would it update the meter? The meter being the thing that actually measures the product???

On 18/12/2013 15:44, Tim Watts wrote: ...

If it does not transmit the amount of water flowing through the pipe, what is the function of the bit outside?

Colin Bignell

All the clever stuff happens in the meter, and the external bit is just an antenna.

actually

Just a link device to the meter on the inside that does the measuring. This is so the meter can be read without having to gain access to the property.

Personally from a smaple of one reading done electronically about 10 years ago on one of our electricity meters I wouldn't trust it. That one reading was wrong... Apart from that one all readings have been manual and entered into the handheld psion device.

On Wednesday 18 December 2013 16:37 Nightjar wrote in uk.d-i-y:

Transmitter I assume - not the consumption logger and non volatile memory which I assume are in the meter itself.

WahtI'm saying is disconnecting the external bit will definately prevent the waterco from reading the meter, but is unlikely to stop the meter accumulating consumption data - otherwise it would be very easy to fiddle!