Water meters..

[apprentice87]

Hi all,

Ok, so what do you all think about water meters?? Some people tell me to get one as i will save loads.. Other people tell me that it is the worst thing that they have ever done.

What say you all??

john..

 

[steptoe]

how much water do you use?

I've always worked on the basis of bedrooms Vs people,

ie: I have 2&1/2 bedrooms, and 6 people, 

would be madness for me to have a water meter, shower is in constant use, and washing machine never turned off.

but, if you live in a 5 bed house on your own, then a water meter is probably a good idea

 

[apprentice87]

Apparently i use quite a lot, according to others!! I see the water board think that to have a bath uses about 18 gallons.. It might if you have three inches of water....

john..

 

[steptoe]

we live in a row of 6, 3 x blocks of semis,

I think everyone else has a meter installed, as last summer we filled everyones paddling pools for them,  :slap

 

[Evans Electric]

I always think if , as Stepps says,  you have a fairly large family , its not a good idea .       3 Teenagers  + shower  = big bills .   3 teenagers + bath  =  disaster. 

Isn't a bath about 30 gallons ? 

I'm guessing that  1 to 2 people, possibly 3,  on a meter would be on a winner .       After that probably better on the fixed  half yearly bill.   A bath plus a water meter would not be good. 

 

[pewter]

in Essex here most of us have them,

my friend tried to refuse one been installed, he didnt win, it got installed.

 

[Lurch]

IME if your are 2 or 3 people using it normally then a meter would probably be cheaper.

If you really want to you could fit your own and sample how much you use.

 

[OnOff]

We had TWO for a while. Biggest f*** up ever to sort. As we have what was originally a smallholding there was one on the plot since the year dot inside our front boundary. They changed it to a digital one. 

We then got a letter during the big meter roll out a few years back saying we'd be having a new meter fitted. We wrote and said we'd already got one. Came home one day to find they'd fitted the same model meter at the kerbside. So now we had two. A few years ensued of them reading the wrong meter, mixing the serial mod up, they even billed us for next door who have horses, hot tub etc. Their meter is on our shared side boundary. 

All sorted now. The original inside the boundary meter is now just a stopcock. Handy as I don't have to go out of the gate and down the road to isolate it.

 

[Murdoch]

We moved 4 years ago and they were supposed to fit one  ..................... 2 years later our incoming pipe had to be replaced, as did the isolator in the road ............... still haven't got one , which suits me............... as there are 4 of us in the house. 

My brother in law lives in a 2010 "mansion" - there isn't a meter on the supply to the house, but there is on the supply to the garage block ......... when their kids are partners are there there are 8 adults in the house........so they are winners too.....

 

[phil d]

I encouraged my old fella to get one fitted when my stepmum died and the rest of the family left home, it saved him loads, round here you can have one on a trial basis.Apparently they'll fit one and you try it for a year, if you don't save money they'll take it back out.

Interestingly enough I see they stopped fitting the meters with the repeater box on them, a few years back, the meter was down the hole and they fitted a secondary display at the house, usually in one of the other meter boxes. this meter was connected to the main unit by a thin 2 core cable, obviously the main meter generated some kind of voltage to cause the digits on the second meter to move.

I always thought that if you applied a small voltage to that cable, then it would stop the main meter from reading, it must have worked, because all of a sudden they started using meters that were mechanical only.

Interestingly enough all this talk about smart meters and saving money is all BS! it's all about revenue protection, a modern electric smart meter can detect a power loss, and inform the meter company, if there hasn't been a power outage in the area then they know someone's been at it! The modern gas meter is the same, try and move it and it goes into lockout, so you can't reverse it, or swap it for another one.

I know one guy who was always fiddling his meter, I think they had an idea, but couldn't catch him at it, anyway they fitted these new meters and as soon as the fitter went out of the door he was at it trying to fiddle the gas! It went into lockout and he had to get them back to reset it, he tried saying it never worked after the guy fitted it, they knew otherwise. Anyway he was given a warning to leave it alone in future.

 

[ProDave]

Re gas meters.  I heard a story of someone that reversed his gas meter from time to time. He got it wrong and the meter reader turned up when it was reversed. So he fessed up and admitted fiddling the gas hoping to get a lighter penalty.  The amusing bit is the meter reader didn't actually report meter fiddling, he just said "could not read meter" and the guy could have got away with it longer.

 

[phil d]

Re gas meters.  I heard a story of someone that reversed his gas meter from time to time. He got it wrong and the meter reader turned up when it was reversed. So he fessed up and admitted fiddling the gas hoping to get a lighter penalty.  The amusing bit is the meter reader didn't actually report meter fiddling, he just said "could not read meter" and the guy could have got away with it longer.

 I knew a guy worked for the gas board, they came round to his house and caught him with his meter reversed, not only was he going to be fined, he'd lose his job, and his pension!

Anyway he got his wife to say she was doing it, she told them he was tight with the housekeeping, so the saving see made by fiddling the gas gave her money for little treats, anyway they said they didn't believe her and they were going to take her to the training centre the next day, so she could show them how it was done.

 He spent all night showing her how to do it, even down to doing a drop test to make sure there were no leaks!

The following morning they took her to the training centre and she showed them how "she" had been fiddling the meter, although it was wrong what "she" had been doing they said it was the safest method they'd ever seen.lol

Incidentally there was another gas bloke who bought a house purely because it had a gas main running beneath the back garden, he tapped it and had 2 supplies to the house, the legit one just fed the gas fire, the free one fed everything else, even in the coldest winter his house was always well heated, I believe he used to walk around in shorts most of the year.

 

[binky]

my FiL has 2 gas meters which he swaps over every once in a while....think he's given up on that trick now as he's getting a bit too old for such non-sense.

 

[Richard-the-Ninth]

We have a water meter.........didn't want one but one day a bloke turned up and plugged it in.

I say plugged it in, as it would seem some years ago our pipework from the main was changed and the stop cock was changed and it has the facility to have a meter "plugged in", a neighbour said he was here less than 5 minutes.

 

[binky]

we had a water meter fitted a few years ago, wife has bath most days, son is in shower far longer than necessary, stopped watering garden - got a water butt, and generally cut back on water use, part of being 'green' anyway. Saved about £300 a year, but we do live in an expensive water rate area. Have since been very tight with hose pipe and rarely get pressure washer out. Most of our appliances are also fairly newish, so energy and water efficicient