Water meters - pros and cons?

Cardew

matelodave wrote: »

I was having a look at the Anglian Water website and was surprised at the cost of unmetered water & sewerage - the standing charges alone come to £482 plus £0.403 per £ of rateable value.
Metered the SC is £116 plus £3.00 per cu.m (water & 90% sewerage), so you've got to use at least 125 cu.m to make unmetered worthwhile
We use about 70 cu.m so are saving at least £156 by being on a meter. I can't remember what our RV is but whatever it is it makes our saving even more.

The standing charge, and charging structure, varies tremendously across the UK, as indeed do all the charges.

IIRC Severn Trent don't have any standing charge for unmetered water and sewerage, but high charges per £1 RV(well over £2 per £1RV)

Also the last general revaluation of Rateable Value in England was in 1973 and some very nice houses have surprisingly low RVs.

evosy1978

Hi
We have just had a water meter installed.

We have a lead rising main into the house. We always thought you had to run the tapd before consuming the water as the lead is dangerous.
Obviously this goes against saving water! Does anyone have a lead risjng main here and have any advice. How long is it recomended to run the water for?

For some reason the cold tap upstairs in the bathroom produces really cloudy water straight away and you have to run it for a while?

Any thoughts.

Thanks

P.s. how do I find the size of my water meter?

AlexMac

I've got to reluctantly admit that moving to a house with a meter altered our behaviour; not just in terms of saving water, but crucially, identifying and fixing leaks.

We moved here on 1st Sept a couple of years back, co-incidentally on the same day a lass turned up to take the 6-monthly reading. So we went green; saved water, showered at the gym, bought a water butt (in the wettest Spring and Summer I can recall, bar this month's deluges); but when we got our first bill the following April- for £800 (admittedly, effectively for an 18-month period, projected forward to the next March) we were shocked.

That made us search the house for leaks- to find that two faulty toilet cisterns were quietly and almost invisibly pouring a steady trickle of overflow down the pan, running 24/7!

Replacing them with nicer, modern close-coupled khazis only cost a couple of hundred and now our water DD is only £14 a month...

Would we have turned aqua-detective if we'd been un-metered?

Vortigern

Cardew wrote: »

Also the last general revaluation of Rateable Value in England was in 1973 and some very nice houses have surprisingly low RVs.

I moved in to a newly built house in 1988. The RV was reduced because the roads were still unsurfaced. The roads were done soon after we moved in, but the RV has never changed.

Should I tell them? :rotfl:

Cardew

Vortigern wrote: »

I moved in to a newly built house in 1988. The RV was reduced because the roads were still unsurfaced. The roads were done soon after we moved in, but the RV has never changed.

Should I tell them? :rotfl:

The letter of the law states that any measure or improvement should be notified to the Water company and a meter fitted.


Of course few people bother, and the water companies are not interested as there is no financial incentive for them.


There are huge mansions in several acres that were virtually derelict at the last valuation; so were awarded a peppercorn RV. They are now modernised, have a Band H council Tax and pay less for their water than a small estate semi.

Vortigern

Cardew wrote: »

The letter of the law states that any measure or improvement should be notified to the Water company and a meter fitted.

I suspect that the valuation office lost interest in RVs when the Poll Tax was introduced.

I am now on a metered supply.

Cardew

Vortigern wrote: »

I suspect that the valuation office lost interest in RVs when the Poll Tax was introduced.

I am now on a metered supply.

Exactly.


When the Poll Tax was introduced in April 1990 meters became compulsory for new build properties and there was no mechanism to assess or change the RV of existing domestic properties.


Rateable Value was based on the notional rent a property could command. Thus with two identical properties, if one was modernised(by 1973 standards) - e.g. central heating, new bathroom/kitchen etc - it would have a higher RV than the un-modernised property.


So in theory if any improvements have been made, in the last 24 years, to a property with water charges based on the RV, it should have been declared and a meter fitted.

I_have_spoken

Anyone on Scottish Water gone for a meter? The sky-high charges imply they are dead against anyone swapping to a meter and prefer to collect based on the house council tax band.

When I lived in Cambs I was on a meter and lo-rate with Anglian Water so it's well annoying to be paying £££s to Scottish Water! But the payback for a meter looks to be years and years :mad:

brewerdave

Just had my latest bill from Welsh Water £430 for last twelve months ...had a meter fitted two years ago -a quick fag packet calculation on RV and the unmetered charges for 2013-4 shows that I would have been chargd ~ £800.
Thus a saving of nearly 50% -no brainer!

John_Pierpoint

Can people complainig or congratulating the result of fitting a meter please give their annuyal consumption in Cubic Meters or Tonnes (It is virtually the same number) - To my way of thinking & living on the north shore of the Thames Estuary ("Dryer than Rome"), both those figures sound like extortion to me, especially as Wales has a massive annual rainfall, when compared with Essex.

How does the bill break down ?

Have you considered rainwater harvesting ?