The price of metered water!!

Apparently not.

I think the homeowner who puts one in, can change their mind (within a certain time?) and the bill goes back to RV basis, but the meter stays connected and the next owner doesn't get the choice ...

Do they charge extra for taking the piss?

The benefits of having a septic tank - you only paid for the supply, not the disposal.

When I had mine installed the cooling off period was 1 year and, as you say, the meter stays and the next owner of the house is metered.

I'm sure what has happened over the years is that the standing daily charge has risen disproportionally to that for the m3 of water so now much of the bill doesn't reflect your actual usage of the amount of water.

Haha, but yes, pretty much.

Looking again with the charges for sewerage it's around £3 m^2, so maybe it's the same business and domestic.

We've a tap in the yard* and handy access at the rear, I had been thinking of getting a jetwasher and doing the cars here, I may shelve that idea.

I take it that £3 is a round figure that covers waste and standing charges given our rates per m3 are around £1.40 supply and £0.90 waste.

When looking at that bear in mind:

a. the average water bill is around £400 which seems to me fair. (What else that's safe to consume can you get delivered for around £1.50 a tonne?)

b. it may be easier to DIY away the wastewater charge if you have a garden for the soakaways and the composting toilet :)

c. they can't cut off domestic users for non-payment - a fact well known to a lot of people who don't care about their credit record.

We have additional problems, being on the watershed we get supply from Northumberland (metered) but during the pandemic they were estimating it (very high) despite it having an externally readable meter. Since we were effectively closed there was no water consumption to speak of.

We pay sewage to Yorkshire water and Northumberland helpfully pass on their bogus estimated readings to them so we have to wrestle two suppliers to the ground each quarterly bill to get it sorted out.

I did catch a meter reader and showed him exactly where the display was last month. Happened to be there having the electrical checks done when he turned up out of the blue. Perhaps it will be OK from now on...

It varies with the company, remember part of the costs are for disposing of waste water as well, which is never metered. Also as a single person household I find metered water saves me a packet. Brian

I think the assumption is, at least it was for my last place where we had a septic tank, that something like 95% of the water you received came back to them as waste, sewage or WHY, for treatment, so they estimated the amount and charged it on that basis. Having a septic tank meant that we paid about half what we would have done if we were connected to the main drainage system. It more than paid for the cost of having the sludge that built up in the tank pumped out every few years.

just keeping my garden alive in hot weather can absorb many cubic meters a day.

I have steadfastly refused to install a meter

Our rainwater is fed into a ditch in front of the house, so we get a rebate on sewage charges

Many years ago we changed from "water rates" to a metered supply as it was only the two of us in the house. Our water bill with the metered supply almost halved. When we moved, we were back on water rates, and had a much higher bill again. Only a couple of years later the whole street had water meters fitted, and the bill dropped again. It wasn't down so much, as we had a much bigger garden and were using a lot more water on it. After a couple of droughts, our water bill was almost as high as it would be with rates.

Around 2/3 of the water bill is sewerage charge, and water used on the garden doesn't go down the sewer. So I checked with the water company and asked that, if I had a water meter fitted on the garden tap, that volume could be subtracted from the water bill sewerage charge. They said it could, but one proviso was that it was fitted by a plumber. I don't know why. The tap was in a awkward place and my plumbing skills are poor, so I paid our plumber to do it. That was August last year. I reckon that depending on how much water I use, it will take 3 or 4 years to recoup the cost of having it fitted.

It shouldn't be., it is a law that all rainwater not be fed into any sewage system on any new build and many old builds have been retro converted. My parents house built in 1952 had a soakaway back then...

It's not a "new build" - it was built in 1911. The rainwater is NOT fed into a sewage system.

you do know how much a cubic metre of water is?

you only use tens of them per person per year.

with unmetered rates for water usually in the range £300-700 pa you are quids in, unless you have a swimming pool in the garden

water plus sewerage comes to about 3 pounds

the supply alone is half that.

Before I had a meter fitted I bought one and fitted it myself so that I could assess how I would fare with metered water rather than the RV based charge. After monitoring consumption for a year, it was obvious that a meter would save me a lot of money.

This has been borne out in practice now that we have a water company-supplied meter. My total annual costs (standing charge + water usage + notional sewage disposal) are only just over half what they would be if based on RV rather than usage.

But there are only 2 of us in a house with a relatively large RV. Where there are a lot of people in a small house, the RV based system would probably be cheaper.

In article <sdrgfg$p59$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, R D S snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com writes

And don't forget the charge for taking it away once you've used it.

Scotlanders won't pay for metered water .....