Good these Water Meter Surveys - NOT!

[Andrew Mawson]

So SE Water want to do a "survey" to fit a compulsory meter on the supply. Appointment duly made - chap turns up - I point out where the incoming supply enters the farm off the A21 - stop c*ck in verge.

OK he says - I'll go and blue mark it for the installation team to find. Comes back looking crestfallen about ten minutes later - he's snapped off the tap in the access pit IN THE OFF STATE !!!!!.

"We'll get a team to replace it in the next few days" - oh no not good enough - livestock to water - do it MUCH faster than that. "Emergency Team" scrambled but I never heard blues and twos :( 5 hours later we have the A21 trunk road reduced to single line working with traffic lights. But we do get our water back. No meter though - need to come back to fit it !!!

.... good these Water Meter Surveys :)

Andrew

[Brian Gaff]

The people who do anything for water companies, and apologies if you work for one, is that they seem to be mostly idiots. it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that an old stopcock that has not been used for years will be stuck. I had to have a replacement meter fitted heresome moths ago due to the floods silting up the old one so nobody could read it. Now a sensible fitter would come prepared with power tools and the like, oh no, he arrives with a mains drill and no extension cable and then has to go to a neighbour to borrow one. Lots of messing about and cursing later he has it working on the new meter. I said to him, why don't they mount it on the wall or something, instead of under the road, oh no that is not possible. At any rate this wonder of the modern age is supposed to be readable by radio, so we shall just have to wait and see. It has no mains connection so just how this works is a bit vague. Brian

[tim...]

cos it needs to be somewhere where it won't freeze

They (can) have a remote sensor which uses some magnetic process to read the meter from a plate on the road/pavement.

I suppose that there is no reason why this can't be attached to a wall, but I suspect that it might suffer from vandalism (or accidental damage) in that location.

tim

[Davey]

The houses we lived in in the US usually had a remote readout for the mechanical water meter, this readout was located on the outside of the house, for easy reading. It must have been powered by a pulse generated by the meter itself, which was in the basement.

[Adrian Caspersz]

Our water meter is read by radio, it has a battery.

[alan_m]

Water freezes. Fitting the meters below ground level prevents this.

[alan_m]

It's the stop c*ck that needs to be protected from freezing. The stop c*ck and the meter are often one integrated unit.

[tim...]

I was suggesting that the remote sensor could be attached to the wall, rather then simply set into the road

tim