do we have a leak-advice please!

stuarta21

having read all the excellent advice dispensed to others i thought i would ask for some help with our situation as our water bills seem to be quite high. myself and my girlfriend live in a 3 bedroom terraced house which has been converted into a ground floor 1 bed and a 1st floor 2 bed flat(we are in the 1 bed).

there are 2 meters situated in the footpath at the front of the property. our last bills were £182.89 and £188.20 (water usage was 67m3 and 68m3 respectively). this seems high as we don't have a power shower,dishwasher or a garden and i don't wash my car at home. we are careful with water and have showers, don't leave the tap running when brushing teeth and use washing machine when its full. i have contacted anglian water on several occasions but they say our usage is high but not excessively so for 2 people. they have told me to do a leak test by turning the water off at the stop tap and checking the meter however i don't know where the stop tap is and neither does our landlord.

i have kept an eye on both meters over the last few weeks (there are 2 people living in the flat above) and the our meter shows us as using between 2-3 times more water than the flat above.

any help or advice will b gratefully received as i do not know what else to do, to top it all we are moving in roughly a month which will make sorting any issues out nearly impossible!

thankyou

Cardew

The stop tap can be in a number of places, often under the kitchen sink. You really need to find where it is in case you have a burst pipe etc inside your flat. The first thing you do is switch that off in the case of an emergency; also you need to turn it off and on every so often as they can sieze up.

However to test if you have a leak, you don't need to switch off the stop tap. Simply note the reading accurately(including the decimal places - usually in red)when you are not going to use water - say at work - and it shouldn't have moved by even a last decimal place (which represents one litre of water)

Of course that 'leak' could then be in your house like a faulty toilet with a trickle of water going into the bowl.

Incidentally you are sure that 'your' meter is really yours and doesn't belong to the flat upstairs?


The average use for a couple is approx 120 cubic metres - so at 135 you are not much above average.

stuarta21

bills are 6 monthly.

checked under sink and in utility cupboard but no sign of tap. the 1st time i rang aw they told me the exact location of our meter and i checked the meter number to make sure. will make a note of the red dials and see what happens

i know it doesn't sound much but in comparison to my parents who use water in much the same way as us but also have a dishwasher and wash the car and live about a mile away we use more which seems illogical to me

thankyou both or your replies

deanos

Make sure you havent got a crossed supply, look at the meter then get someome to turn on a cold water tap to see if the correct meter is spinning.

You really need to find the internal stoptap, this will be down to the landlord to pinpoint

stuarta21

deanos wrote: »

Make sure you havent got a crossed supply, look at the meter then get someome to turn on a cold water tap to see if the correct meter is spinning.

You really need to find the internal stoptap, this will be down to the landlord to pinpoint

i have asked our landlord on more than one occasion where our stop tap is but if he knows he won't say, in fact he usually tells me we haven't got a stop tap at all!good job we're moving just want to get this sorted one way or the other. i have asked aw if there is a separate account for the upstairs flat and they say there is but we have lived here nearly 2 years and i've never seen any aw mail addressed to the upstairs flat :mad:

deanos

the bill for the flat upstairs could go elsewhere.

have you checked for a cross supply ?

msmicawber

It sounds high to me as there's three of us and we don't go mad about conserving water, but average 72 cubic metres per year. I'd definitely do a leak test as Cardew has suggested. Even if you don't have a genuine leak, your meter could be faulty.

If your stop !!!! isn't under the kitchen sink, it may be in the bathroom instead.