Water meters - pros and cons?

Spendless

My nan lives alone in a similar sized 3 bed semi to us (family of 4) same town but different areas. She is on a water meter and paying exactly the same as us on water rates. . £300 a year.

She doesn't have a shower in her house but nor does she have a DW nor is she watering the garden each day.

Art_2

Spendless wrote:

My nan lives alone in a similar sized 3 bed semi to us (family of 4) same town but different areas. She is on a water meter and paying exactly the same as us on water rates. . £300 a year.

She doesn't have a shower in her house but nor does she have a DW nor is she watering the garden each day.

This doesn't seem right. I pay £11 per month and this normally leaves a small credit at the end of the year. Other neighbours are paying about the same.

You need to contact the water company and get them to carry out an urgent investigation.

When I first had my meter fitted the water company connected it up to the house next door by mistake and I had to get them to sort it out.

As a quick check to see you are connected properly, look at the meter and get someone to run the tap for a while and then turn it off again. You should see the meter start and stop.

I am sure you will eventually get it sorted out but when you do, don't forget to make sure they backdate your claim to the time the meter was fitted. Also ask for compensation.

Regards,
Art.

cupid_s

We are going to move over to a water meter very soon. I already collect rain water to water my plants as it's better for them than tap water. We put the washing machine on twice a week usually. So I hope I save lots of money

One question though. How the hell do showers use less water than baths? I have showers much more than baths, as does husband (he never bathes - come to think of it he doesn't shower all that much either yuk!)
A conventional (not power) shower uses between 7 and 10 litres of water per minute.
A bath uses 36-50 litres. So you only have to be in the shower 5 minutes and you've used more water than a bath would have.

I don't know about you but I don't think 5 mins in the shower is really very long.

welshman10

Just got a water bill for £300 (Jan-Aug).

We are on a meter. 2 of us in the house. We don't wash the cars very often, have no garden to speak of so no sprinklers etc, 1 shower and 1 bath each day per person, washing up at teatime and wash between 2-5 loads per week.

Surely this ain't right?

Art_2

welshman10 wrote:

Just got a water bill for £300 (Jan-Aug).

We are on a meter. 2 of us in the house. We don't wash the cars very often, have no garden to speak of so no sprinklers etc, 1 shower and 1 bath each day per person, washing up at teatime and wash between 2-5 loads per week.

Surely this ain't right?

Yes, it seems very high. I assume you don't have any noticeabable leaks etc. Tell the water company you are worried and ask them to check the meter and the run of water. When I had my meter installed initially they connected it to my neighbours supply and had to re do it.

One quick thing you can do is see if the meter is registering correctly. Make sure you have no water running. Check that the meter is also not running. Turn on a tap and see if the meter starts.

Regards,
Art.

welshman10

Art wrote:

Yes, it seems very high. I assume you don't have any noticeabable leaks etc. Tell the water company you are worried and ask them to check the meter and the run of water. When I had my meter installed initially they connected it to my neighbours supply and had to re do it.

One quick thing you can do is see if the meter is registering correctly. Make sure you have no water running. Check that the meter is also not running. Turn on a tap and see if the meter starts.

Regards,
Art.

We have already had one faulty meter a couple of years ago. It was a new house and for the first year our bills were £5 in total (2 X 6 monthly bills).

It took countless phone calls and letters for them to believe we had a faulty meter. We didn't want to be hit with a massive bill at some point in the future, which is why we were trying to inform them. All they kept doing was reciting their stats "only 13 faulty meters since the year x etc".

I will check the meter as you suggest.

Thanks

WhizLiz

I signed up for a water meter just over a year ago and have halved my water bill. Was £450 a year, now around £225 a year, even though we have a large pond in garden that takes 2,000 galls of water and we do numerous water changes throughout the year to keep it in good condition for the fish.

welshman10

Some of you on a meter, can you let me know how many units you use per week?

The girl from Welsh water told us to keep an eye on our meter and it should go up on average approx 2 units per week. I estimate from our last bill that it is going up by 5 or 6 units per week.

Cardew

The average is approx one sixth of a unit(cu mtr) per day per person.

So for 2 people 0.33 units a day, 2.3 units per week.
So for 3 people 0.5 units a day, 3.5 units per week.
etc etc

welshman10

Cardew wrote:

The average is approx one sixth of a unit(cu mtr) per day per person.

So for 2 people 0.33 units a day, 2.3 units per week.
So for 3 people 0.5 units a day, 3.5 units per week.
etc etc

So we are using approximately double the average then?

This is our typical daily usage for the household

2 X shower
2 X bath (although I sometimes just use her water )
4 X cleaning teeth
4 X pints drinking water
4 X cups of tea
2 X washing dishes (by hand)
1 X washing machine load (3-5 loads per week say)
1 X pint glass for watering plants
4 X toilet flushes

That's all I can think of. Is that really double an average household's usage?