water meter is a little bit cheaper for me

bud-miser

terry-stoke wrote:

Hi,
I live in South West Water land, god help me!
I made the mistake of switching to a meter about 3-4 years ago. Our r.v. was £358, quite high, and I'd heard so many stories of people saving. Big mistake! The last letter from them asked for a Direct Debit of £80 per month! There is me, my wife, my daughter and her fiancee, we never wash the cars or water the garden, have an A rated washing machine, what more can we do? No, we haven't got a leak, I've checked.
So paying three or four hundred pound a year sounds good to me, on our total income, pre-tax, of £17,500.
Think very carefully before you jump.

I've switched recently to metering, too. Severn Trent have told me that if I'm dissatisfied with the situation after a year I can elect to go back to RV based payments.

Cardew

flang wrote:

How do water companies calculate how much your water bill is going to be if your not on a meter?

All properties built post 1989 have to have a meter fitted - *although there are some exceptions.

Prior to 1989 all properties had a Rateable Value(RV) - this was the system before the introduction of the current Council Tax bands. In general the bigger and more valuable your house the higher the RV - although there were lot of cases where this did not apply.

Those properties without a meter have their water and sewerage charges assessed on this RV. In my area it is £1.82 for every £1 of RV.

So if your house has an RV of £300 you will pay £546 + some standing charges.

* for those properties where a meter can't be fitted you pay an assessed charge. This is their estimate of the average for that type of property.