Paying for neighbours water

Ik51

Hi,

I'm looking for some advice. I have recently had my kitchen done and the when the builder turned off the water using the stopcock in my house, my neighbours water went off too. As I am on a meter UU have agreed that this means I have been paying for their water too. The neighbour has also been paying UU through RV. I will be staying with my daughter for a few weeks as she will be undergoing chemotherapy. Whenever I'm out of the house for a while I usually turn the water off as many years ago the cellar flooded and I don't want that to happen again. UU have now said if I want to turn my water off I need to sort out the supply to the neighbouring property as the supply comes through my house. Does anyone have any advice/guidance as to whether this is correct as I would have thought it was their responsibility to ensure they had a water supply considering they are charging for this supply. (I should note the house was empty for a while which is why this hasn't come to light in  the past.)

Any advice is appreciated, thanks.

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

If UU don't sort out the issue, contact the Consumer Council for Water https://www.ccwater.org.uk/households/

A phone call is best

[Deleted User]

I would have thought that someone needs to look at your water pipes. A shared supply is not unusual;  what would be unusual is a pipe split after your meter. In this case, you are being metered and charged for the supply to both houses. If the junction in the supply pipe is before your meter then you are not paying for your neighbour’s water supply. I would have thought that this was an issue that should have been addressed/mentioned when the meter was put in.

Miss_Honest76

Have you recently moved? What confuses me is that you say ' whenever I am out of the house for a while I usually turn off the water' surely your neighbour would have complained that they had had no water whilst you had been away ? 

Reed_Richards

It's normal to have a stopcock inside the house and a water authority stopcock down a small "manhole" outside.  If a water meter is fitted outside the house there is a stop valve next to it.  Maybe the OP misunderstood about where the water was turned off; it must surely have been at the stop valve by the water meter which is presumably outside the house.  But if that is true then there is nothing to worry about turning the water off at the internal stopcock.  Then the only concern is that the meter was metering water supplied to two properties. 

sebtomato

[Deleted User] said:

A shared supply is not unusual;  what would be unusual is a pipe split after your meter. 

Isn't the splitting of pipes after the meter the very definition of a shared supply??

Cardew

sebtomato said:

Dolor said:

A shared supply is not unusual;  what would be unusual is a pipe split after your meter. 

Isn't the splitting of pipes after the meter the very definition of a shared supply??

Take 3 old terraced houses.

It sometimes happened that a shared supply(a mains pipe) supplied the 3 houses passing through House No1 onto No2 and then to No3.  No1 had a stopc0ck inside the house that could cut off the supply to the other two houses.

If a meter was fitted to any of the houses of that shared supply system it obviously shoud be fitted to a feed off the common supply; so it is only measuring the consumption in that house.