HUGE water bill, what next?

Bunty_Bagshaw

My MIL moved into sheltered accommodation back in December and has just got her first water bill, it is nearly five hundred pounds! I have a four bedroom house and three kids and mine is only two hundred pounds a year! They came out and re-read her meter from the outside and it has gone up a huge amount since the original reading, meaning she now owes about seven hundred pounds. She is 75 and has dementia so you can imagine, she is beside herself and no matter how many times we tell her not to panic, she still does, because she forgets what we have said to herself.

We cannot see the meter ourselves as the housing association has very helpfully boarded over it in the bathroom :doh: but the person who came out from Severn Trent had a look for any obvious cause and they said they think there is a fault with her immersion heater so that it is constantly refilling.

Someone is coming on Friday to look at the immersion.

Is she going to be liable for this huge bill? Any advice, or anything at all we can do?

TIA

Cardew

They read the meter from outside? Presumably the property has one of the modern remote read meters??

If her meter in the property is boarded over, it needs to be uncovered to check the reading.

A fault with an immersion heater, 'so it is constantly refilling', makes no sense to me.

Assuming MIL lives on her own, average consumption in the 6 months since December would be in the region of 25 - 30 cubic metres. £700 at Severn Trent prices would be around 280 cubic metres.

So 250,000 litres have 'leaked' in 6 months - 1,300+ litres a day!

Could MIL in confused state have left tap(s) on 24/7?

The main culprit for internal leaks are toilet cisterns overflowing into bowl - but not at that rate of leakage.

The meter needs to be checked by firstly turning off water at main stopc0ck and confirm it isn't moving.

Then watch meter over a fixed period to see how much consumption it indicates. As meters measure down to 1 litre(third red dial) it will be easy to see if something is wrong.

Bunty_Bagshaw

It doesn't make any sense to me either, but then I don't know enough about immersion heaters to tell, tbh. In any case someone is coming to look at it.

I don't know how I am going to get at the meter. Sigh.

Btw, MIL forgets what we have said to her but she doesn't leave taps on or anything like that, not yet anyway.

deanos

was a reading taken when she moved in ?

Bunty_Bagshaw

Yes, it was, we got them to come out and do it.

Well, after some drastic surgery on the interior of the bathroom we found the meter. It doesn't move when the stopcock is off and it doesn't move when it is on and nothing is running, so it clearly isn't a leak. We took a reading and then called Severn Trent who said that at that rate she has used about £300 worth of water in a couple of weeks! So they agree that something has gone drastically wrong with the meter and they are going to put in a new one, zero it and read it after three weeks, averaging it out and basing the bill on that.

I think that's pretty fair, so we shall wait and see!

Bunty_Bagshaw

I still don't know what they were on about re. the immersion heater though.

samsmoot

A reminder that all water companies have charitable trusts which can help those encountering difficulty in paying their water charges. You don't have to be on benefit to apply.