water meters

tommyteapot

Hi All. I would like to share my experience with our water meters. When we go away for a few days in our caravan, I always turn the water off..as once we had a leak in our old address. I do this outside at the actual water meter , which is usually a little round flap found mainly on the perimeter of your property.

 Anyway, you will find a little plastic `key` with a hexhagonal nut shape it fits into, if you turn it clockwise until it stops, the water is shut off completly...importantly..BEFORE the meter, so ineffect NO WATER can pass through the meter. 

 I always take the reading when I do this. After we came back off our little break I turn the water back on with the little key outside, and guess what..the meter shows we had used 136 litres of water? with NO WATER PASSING THROUGH IT. Anyway to cut a long story short, after some to and frowing with water company they changed the meter. It was fine for a month or two..but this week we went away again, I did the same procedure of turning the water off and taking a note of the reading...And yes youve guessed it..again it had clocked up about 40 litres a day, with the water shut off and NO WATER passing through. It seems a amazing coincedence we should have the only 2 meters that are faulty, so I would advise anybody to do the same, especially if you are away a few days. A short term turn off might not be enough to show. Could this be the tip of the iceberg as I am sure not many people would ever find this out, as they wouldn`t go outside to turn it off.  

QrizB

Welcome to the forum.

You've shared one of the steps we always recommend to people who have unexpected large water bills. Glad it helped you, I'm sure it will help others!

Brie

If only all meters were so easily accessible!!  ours is under a metal plate in the middle of a road! No way I can sit there to get the cover off and take a reading let alone turn it off and on!!!!   If I had been able to I might have noticed that it didn't work at all for about 2 years and supposedly we didn't use any water at all during that time!!