High consumption

Chunters_a_lot

Would appreciate any thoughts / help.

Longish story - will try and cover all the pertinent point.

29 Nov 2013 - New water meter fitted. Lived here with metered water for the last 13 years. Water company admitted that meter was changed as they had been unable to see the reading for 2 years :mad: Yes, I should have noticed the estimated readings!

9 December 2013 - New meter read showing usage of 59 cubic metres over 19 days. Previous 6 month estimate was for 60 cubic metres.

6 January 2014 - Letter from Water company about this 'higher than normal' usage.

1 April 2014 - Meter reading 415 (so that is 415 cubic metres in 123 days - or 3.37 cubic metres per day!).

Investigations carried out between 6 Jan and today:
Water company tested for but found no external leak either on my pipework or theirs.
My Plumber did a 'drop test' and found no internal leak.
Water company did find an issue with pipework to new meter which was corrected but has had no impact on consumption.
Water company has now tested to see if 'someone else' is connected into our supply - no one is.

We are a large family living in a large house - there are currently 7 (4 adults, 3 children) of us here. However after 13 years of being metered we are really good about our consumption. Have however never disputed that we probably have above average consumption.

With no actual readings for the 2 years prior to the meter change I don't have much in the way of proof of our normal consumption.

I don't know what to do / think really Is there any possibility we could be using that amount of water per day???

closed

The water company/plumber should have done all this, but do it yourself to check

check meter isn't turning (ie filling up a loft tank or toilet), take a reading to 3 decimal places, run a known volume of cold water off (ie a few 2.2litre milk bottles), check meter reading matches what you have run off.

presumably the plumber checked all overflows, including loft tanks if you have them - double check the levels in the toilet/tanks are below the overflow pipe

turn off house stopcock for an hour and take readings before and after, if it moves, the problem is before your stopcock.

"Water company did find an issue with pipework to new meter which was corrected" that suggests a leak,, if it wasn't fixed properly it could explain why you seem to still be using a lot

Anything is possible, if you flush toilets 50+ times a day, and run a powershower and washing machine continuously, but it's a lot (about 400+ toilet flushes per day)

Chunters_a_lot

Thank you. Will try that one this evening. I need to contact the water company following todays checks so would be good to give them the result of that test too.

Yes all overflow were checked - we have 4 toilets, 2 of which have the internal overflows so they were checked particularly carefully.

matelodave

Unfortunately unless you've been monitoring it yourself you are stuffed when something goes wrong and you've no evidence of when it was correct. Once the ginormous bill has come in, you've used it and will have to pay for it.
You will have to put a lot of effort into taking daily readings to find out when and why the meter is ramping up to see if something is wrong

Chunters_a_lot

Think I have the high bill covered - the final actual reading (on the old meter) was ignored by the water company (as it was higher than my average but not showing an excessive consumption) and I was billed on an estimated reading based on the estimated readings of the previous 2 years. In turn those estimated readings were based on actual readings over the previous 10 year period. So between us we have agreed the billing on the old meter.

However if I had noticed the long period over which estimated readings were being used I could have been more pro active in ensuring they got an actual reading. In fact it was not until the problems following the installation of new meter that I found out that this was reason the meter was replaced.

Following several phone calls today it seems that myself and the water company are finally in agreement that there is no leak (either internal or external) and that we are not consuming an average of 3.37 cubic meters of water a day :eek: As a result the water company have also agreed to bill us our normal usage for the period from when the new meter was fitted until the problem is resolved.

I am more convinced than ever that the calibration of the meter is wrong. However the water company are still reluctant :mad: to check the actual meter. So we will be having a data logger fitted to the meter in the next few weeks. Alongside this I need to keep a 'water diary' while the data logger is fitted (about 2-3 weeks).

I will do the tests and monitoring suggested by both posters above while awaiting the arrival of the data logger