Water bill increase - burst pipe!

discountdude12

Hi, I am a house of two and I have recently received my new water bill for the upcoming year and my prices have increased from £26 a month to £76.

After discussing with Welsh Water, they asked me to conduct some tests to see if I can identify a leak - all tests were carried out and a leak had been identified. The next steps were to locate the leak, so two engineers from Welsh Water came and thought they had found it at the very border of my land at the frontend of my drive.

Over the following days the two engineers came back and dug up my front garden using a digger only for them to confirm there was no leak. Therefore, they sent two different engineers round who then identified the leak at the back of my house in my back garden, nowhere near the original spot.

So long story short, I have two questions:

1. Do I have any grounds to ask Welsh Water to reduce my Water bill even though the leak was on my land?
2. Should I ask for any compensation on the damages done where they initially thought the leak was?

Any advice would be appreciated

MattMattMattUK

discountdude12 said:

Hi, I am a house of two and I have recently received my new water bill for the upcoming year and my prices have increased from £26 a month to £76.

After discussing with Welsh Water, they asked me to conduct some tests to see if I can identify a leak - all tests were carried out and a leak had been identified. The next steps were to locate the leak, so two engineers from Welsh Water came and thought they had found it at the very border of my land at the frontend of my drive.

Over the following days the two engineers came back and dug up my front garden using a digger only for them to confirm there was no leak. Therefore, they sent two different engineers round who then identified the leak at the back of my house in my back garden, nowhere near the original spot.

So long story short, I have two questions:

1. Do I have any grounds to ask Welsh Water to reduce my Water bill even though the leak was on my land?
2. Should I ask for any compensation on the damages done where they initially thought the leak was?

Any advice would be appreciated

1) You can ask, but as the leak was on your side of the meter (whose land it is on is irrelevant) they are more than likely to say no.
2) Again, you can ask, but they will probably say no, they were investigating, trying to find the leak, they will very likely have clauses that exempt them and very often a private leak company will charge you far more to find and fix a leak than the water company will. 

brook_heather

1. When I had a water leak with Thames Water they said the extra costs would be covered so long as it was fixed quickly (within a couple of weeks) - the water usage would be baselined down to the two weeks usage after it was fixed so certainly asking your supplier whether they will credit you the additional usage (assuming you have now fixed the leak?)
2. I would be more concerned with not being charged by WW for their costs in trying to find the leak on your land so I wouldn't push for that.

Next time you might want to employ a tracer company to find the leak which doesn't involve randomly digging up your land - they can pump a tracer gas in to the supply pipe for example which usually pinpoints where it is leaking out.

Green_hopeful

Look up leakage allowance. Our water company allows you to have a rebate so long as you meet their requirements. Even if you can’t get the water rebate if the  water didn’t go down the sewer you should get a sewage rebate. 

Swipe

The OP should consider themselves lucky they got it fixed for free by the water company on their side of the boundary. Not many these days that would do that.

discountdude12

Swipe said:

The OP should consider themselves lucky they got it fixed for free by the water company on their side of the boundary. Not many these days that would do that.

It wasn’t fixed for free - I paid a private plumber to fix it