Water meter pit continuously filling with water (not rain).

bhunachicken

A little bit of preamble:

In the past week, I could hear a feint hissing in my kitchen, where water comes into the property. Turning off the stop !!!!!! did nothing.

I called a plumber, and after investigating the inlets, kitchen pipes, etc. he went to the outside water meter pit (located on the pavement) and took a look. It was full of water.

He drained it, and it began to immediately fill up again.

Turning off the water to my property resulted in the hissing in my kitchen stopping. Turning it back on resulted in the hissing coming back.

In both cases, the meter pit would fill with water, regardless of whether supply to the house was cutoff.

He spoke to his boss, and both were convinced this is an issue for the water company, as turning off the supply to the property did nothing to stop the meter pit from filling with water.

I've contacted South East Water, who have said they will be investigating.

---

But here's the things I don't understand (I appreciate some of this will be too vague):

Why is there is hissing sound in my kitchen from the water intake..? Surely that's the sound of water passing through pipes.

Is it possible that the water is flowing back from my property into the pit, which is why it continued to fill even after turning off the supply?

Do these pits have some sort of cut off system? The water in the pit itself rises to a certain level, and then stops completely. If it a leak from me flowing back, would the pit be overflowing?

If it does end up being my issue, would "water escape" cover this on insurance (I have an excess of £350), or would that be something else, since it would be an underground pipe, and not in the property itself.

Veteransaver

They can leak at the.meter and fill up the pit

Is the meter spinning up when the meter is turned on? The hissing is either a leak or simply normal usage. Do you have a water storage tank in the loft?
If you have a stoptap in the house, turning this off is usually a good way to tell whether you have a leak between the meter and entry into your house

bryanb

what was the plumber’s diagnosis?

MattMattMattUK

The hissing sound is being carried down the pipes, they are acting as conduits to bring the sound in from outside the property.

fatbelly

I had the same, immediately after the meter was fitted for the first time.

Everything was done at water company expense including £200 comp as I was without proper pressure for 2 weeks.

bhunachicken

bryanb said:

what was the plumber’s diagnosis?

The plumber said that the fault was with the supply pipe, outside of the property bounds; road side, basically. He said there was no risk to the property, and that I need to contact South East Water (have done so, twice).

MattMattMattUK said:

The hissing sound is being carried down the pipes, they are acting as conduits to bring the sound in from outside the property.

I thought it might be something like that. Physics, basically.

fatbelly said:

I had the same, immediately after the meter was fitted for the first time.

Everything was done at water company expense including £200 comp as I was without proper pressure for 2 weeks.

They've given me no ETA on the fix, but I'm hoping it'll happen next week. They've also promised me a "leak allowance" credit to my account.

Thanks for getting back to me on this on. It's put my mind more at rest. I've had a bunch of problems with this house, all related to plumbing, so this was looking like yet another thing that had gone wrong.

edwink

We had a leak on our water meter some time ago as noticed our usage had increased although definitely not using more water in the house, we always checked it often anyway, the numbers on the meter I mean. We found this out after turning off stopcock in the house etc like you have already done. Our water meter chamber used to fill with water and stay at a high level whereas previous to this it didn't so knew something wasn't quite right but the chamber never overflowed so guess it was draining away too at the same time. We got as much water out of the chamber as we possibly could and then saw that the meter was registering the water being lost by showing the metered water amount going up on the metered panel at the top but it was only slowly moving but we were obviously being charge for it.  So we sponged the rest of the water out right to the very bottom of the chamber, it took quite a while but we got there in the end, the sponging bit I mean.  Then we sat and watched water trickle into the chamber from the meter itself so sponged that bit of water out too. Then dried the meter where the trickle was and around the meter itself so was almost dry except for the trickled water area.  We then put a folded up piece of kitchen paper under where the trickle was coming from and it finally soaked the kitchen paper so we knew then it was leaking.

We telephoned our water company and they came along and checked everything themselves. We explained what we had done to see for ourselves if and where the leak was.  They agreed the meter itself was leaking and I think it was about a week later they fitted a new meter. They deducted money from our next bill for the amount over and above our normal regular metered usage plus a little more on top.

We have still kept an eye on the new meter and we don't get water in the chamber now unless it heavily rains.

Hope that helps.

Edwink 

bhunachicken

Annoyingly, the plumber said it was on the road side, the tech guy from SE Water said it was on the road side, but when the engineers came to dig up the road, they found that water is continuing to run out from my bounds.

They now believe it's right on the edge of the boundary, but on my side.

I've asked them to get the tech guy to come back and double check.

At least my insurance company have said they'll cover it, if so.

bhunachicken

Just to conclude this:

The leak is due to my mains water supply having burst. Most likely this is simply due to age. I have chosen to have it replaced, rather than repaired.

Of the £2380 I was quoted to have the replacement done, South East Water has said they will contribute £250 toward the bill, while my insurance company will cover up to £1040.

All in all, I will have to pay £1100 to have a supply bypass done. However, South East Water have said they won't bill me for my excess water usage outside of what they would deem to have been my regular usage.