Water meter Help!

smileyblonde43

Hi, am new to this so hope I am posting in the right place.

We bought our 2 bed property a year ago and have recently had our first year accounts from the management company. Our water is 'resold' through the management as the block of flats (54 in total), has one meter for the water company. The developer then metered each flat separately.
The problem we have is that our meter seems to be suggesting that we have used £1200 of water in a year. We moved from anothermetered flat and we're paying around £25 a month for our water, so this has come as somewhat of a shock. We haven't changed our habits and have checked our consumption on some online calculators which suggest we should be paying around £400 a year. The water company won't speak to us as we aren't the account holders, the building management seem to not to care less and the consumer water council have said they can't help as it's a 'water resale' issue, not a water company dispute.
We are at a loss as to what to do and who to ask for help. We have no leaks that we know of and are a 3rd floor, mid corridor flat so think that if there was a leak, someone would be complaining!
Our flats were built approx 4 years ago by Redrow. The only thing we have to go on is the fact that we can read the meters from 6 other properties and they range from being exceptionally low (102 units), to exceptionally high (2460).

Can anyone suggest where to go for help or suggest what the issue might be?

Sicard

This type of arrangement doesn't sound very fair considering some people are careful with their consumption and others don't give a monkeys. Years ago when we went metered our bill tripled but as we had a year to change our minds we went back to pre-metered.

This link may help you http://www.ofwat.gov.uk/households/your-water-bill/waterresale/

xyz123

Is your flat is individually metered as suggested in your post? So in that case amount of water you use is just for you. So then it's down to the unit rate and was that agreed before buying the flat?
If it is not metered who (and how) decides how much water you use.

Aylesbury_Duck

smileyblonde43 wrote: »

Hi, am new to this so hope I am posting in the right place.

We bought our 2 bed property a year ago and have recently had our first year accounts from the management company. Our water is 'resold' through the management as the block of flats (54 in total), has one meter for the water company. The developer then metered each flat separately.
The problem we have is that our meter seems to be suggesting that we have used £1200 of water in a year. We moved from anothermetered flat and we're paying around £25 a month for our water, so this has come as somewhat of a shock. We haven't changed our habits and have checked our consumption on some online calculators which suggest we should be paying around £400 a year. The water company won't speak to us as we aren't the account holders, the building management seem to not to care less and the consumer water council have said they can't help as it's a 'water resale' issue, not a water company dispute.
We are at a loss as to what to do and who to ask for help. We have no leaks that we know of and are a 3rd floor, mid corridor flat so think that if there was a leak, someone would be complaining!
Our flats were built approx 4 years ago by Redrow. The only thing we have to go on is the fact that we can read the meters from 6 other properties and they range from being exceptionally low (102 units), to exceptionally high (2460).

Can anyone suggest where to go for help or suggest what the issue might be?

I don't think you have any other option than to speak to your management company. Without knowing your own water usage habits or those of your neighbours it's difficult to be sure, but if there seem to be large variations in metered usage across the six meters you can read, it might suggest a problem with the way the individual meters are configured/calibrated, or perhaps they weren't all "zeroed" properly on installation. From your description, it's probable that the aggregated use across all flats is accurate but there may be inconsistencies in the way the individual meters have been set up. Of course it could be that your calculation is incorrect - do you know the opening reading for your own meter?

The problem you might have is resistance from the other owners who are perfectly happy with a £100 annual water bill and don't want the landlord looking into things!

smileyblonde43

Each property has a meter. We have requested the meter readings for the time the flat has been lived in. The first 16 months it used 80 units, the next 12 used 290 (both these by the previous owner), then this year we have supposedly used 240 units. We haven't changed our habits from our previous flat, which was also metered.
We have the bills and they have told us how they work out who owes what, (percentage of units used compared to whole block), which is obviously fair, but our usage is not that high. If there was a leak or we used an exceptional amount of water, then fair enough, but our meter seems to suggest we are using as much water as a family of 6. We're paying almost triple what friends with houses and 2 young children are paying.
Can't help feeling that this is going to take forever to get sorted as we can't seem to find out where to go for help.

Aylesbury_Duck

Is it possible that the 80 units over 16 months includes a long period (or aggregated periods) of no occupancy?

Can you confirm that a "unit" on your meter is one cubic metre (or 1,000 litres )?

290 over 12 months then 240 the following year seems high. We're a family of four and use less than 150 units a year but we are pretty efficient, no car washing or gardening with hoses, modern washing machine and dishwasher that use less water than older models, no deep baths or long showers and so on. You mentioned one of the other properties using 2460 units? What is it, a carwash?!

I think there are a few things you need to look at. What is your water usage really like? Lots of deep baths or long showers? Do you use a hose for gardening or washing the car (if so, have you turned the tap off fully?) Secondly, you presumably signed up to an agreement on the cost per unit. Is the management company charging a high fee on top of what you would be paying as a direct customer? If your lifestyle isn't that water-efficient and there's a premium on your unit charge, the combination would explain your high bills.

fezster

You should check the meter is reading only your flat and is counting usage correctly.

Try turning all water appliances off and monitoring the meter for short periods of time throughout the day (to see if another flats usage is being attributed to your meter). And then try filling some buckets with measured amounts of water and seeing how much your meter reading increases by.

Ant555

There are some good suggestions here already but a relative had a similar query on his sheltered housing water charges.

His flat was consuming quite a bit of water even when he was not there (we took readings on water meter at the start of a holiday and then just before he came back) and it turned out to be a faulty something or other in his loo so water was constantly flowing from the tank into the bowl - albeit slowly, silently and almost unnoticeable till we were looking.

Hope this helps and adds something else to look at/eliminate

smileyblonde43

80 units was under occupancy be believe. we are a 3rd floor flat so no garden or car washing. We collect rainwater to water the small number of plants we have on our balcony. The meter says that they are cubic metres. We are only charged for the water (so far as we can tell), no admin charges on top. We are out at work 12 hours most days so not using water during the day. No dishwasher, modern washing machine that we use 2/3 times a week on a quick 30 degree wash, rarely have baths, shower is used twice most days for around 10 minutes.
Will try filling measures buckets to see what happens and keep on at our management company to get it looked into. My gut says something isn't right, but without their cooperation I'm not sure where we can go.

smileyblonde43

Will look into any small leaks too. Fixed an issue with one of the toilets shortly after we moved in, so will check the other one in case there is a 'silent' leak.

Aylesbury_Duck

Ant555 wrote: »

There are some good suggestions here already but a relative had a similar query on his sheltered housing water charges.

His flat was consuming quite a bit of water even when he was not there (we took readings on water meter at the start of a holiday and then just before he came back) and it turned out to be a faulty something or other in his loo so water was constantly flowing from the tank into the bowl - albeit slowly, silently and almost unnoticeable till we were looking.

Hope this helps and adds something else to look at/eliminate

This would be a strong candidate for the cause of your problem, given what you've said about your lifestyle. The good suggestion to turn everything off and monitor the meter will tell you if it's something like this. You should take the lid off the toilet cistern and see/hear if it is slowly filling/draining when not in use.

If it isn't a running tap or constantly filling toilet, the only other explanation I can think of is that somehow your meter is not installed correctly and is either including a volume of supply to a neighbouring property, or is calibrated incorrectly and is overestimating the volume of water passing through it. If the metered volume continues to increase when you have nothing turned on and you've eliminated the toilet as a cause, this is really all it can be. As you said in an earlier post, it surely can't be a leak because the volume of water involved would be enormous and would have manifested itself by now!