Posidrive

Most obvious way is to get a decent sized container that you know the volume of and while everyting else is disconnected/switched off fill it (with cold water) a few times and note the change in meter reading. This should at least tell you if the readings are in the right ball park, downside is that you are paying for the test water.

I presume that you don't have a timed sprinkler system. We had never had one of these before so didn't have any feel at all for how much water they use. First bill came in and showed that in the first month we used well over 200 m3 . Just as well that at the time usage charges were capped at 30 m3

fledermaus

Ah I see now. I was puzzled as the water is meant to go into the bowl, but you meant without flushing.

However, if all the water is turned off and the meter is not runing then there is no leak and the meter must be faulty or calibrated wrongly whatever the nice young lady at the water company says.

Posidrive

One other thing that comes to mind is that if there is any air getting into the system before the meter then it will cause the meter to over read regardless of whether or not the meter itself is working properly.

Piff Poff

Alternatitively we could turn the water off to the loo and see if the tank empties on it's own, which is what we did and why we thought there was a problem with the loo. It did empty on it's own once. It still doesn't explain the amount of water being read as we turned the loo off.

Piff Poff

That could be worth a try. No we don't have sprinklers, water in Alix is notoriously expensive, NO ONE waters their grass. So not only is the stuff expensive, we have got leak detected on tow bills since the new remote readable meter was fitted. It can apparently tell when there is a leak.

So how do you test that?

Piff Poff

The only explanation we got was that the new water meter was the type that can detect if there is a leak. It has detected a leak so she got her stamp and red in pad out and stamped the bill.

iaink

You dont have a cat do you?

Seriously, my wife used to share a flat with a cat that loved to watch the water swirl down the bowl and had figured out how to flush!

They only found out cos the downstairs neighbours commented on the constant flushing!

Failing that a large bucket and counting how many fills till the meter ticks over is my only useful suggestion.

Piff Poff

She won't let us speak to anyone else, she is the most obstinate woman in the world, we have suggested that the meter needs checking and she just says, there is nothing wrong with the meter. We are talking about the receptionist who answers the phone in the village office, the one that deals with village tax, welcomes you when you move to the village, gives you info on where you need to go for planning permission etc. She's not a water specialist.

We have told her that there is no way we could use as much water as they are saying as we don't live there full time - very rarely this summer as we didn't get summer really. Which is why we did the experiment this weekend. Our last Red Deer bill shows we used 9 cubic meters, which is .3 per day. In One 24 hour period at Alix we used 1 whole cubic meter, we turned the water off overnight and we turned the suspicious loo off in between uses. It just doesn't make sense.

Piff Poff

That's hilarious, no, no cats only a water hating doggy.

Posidrive

I'm intrigued that a cheap and cheerful domestic water meter has decent automatic leak detection. Oil companies spend large amounts of money on sophisticated leak detection systems that use a mixture of hardware and software. A tad more sophisticated that what they have installed in your house.

What did they use before they installed the new meter in you house? Did they by any chance have an old manual meter at the boundary to your property. If so, that could be the basis for them claiming a leak, especially if your remote readable meter is reading less than the old one. There could be leak between the boundary and you house? Just conjecture though.

When you said that you turned off the water, where is the stop cock in relation to the meter? Was that the one only a few inches away. If so, turn it off and then monitor the water consumption overnight or at least over a few hours. If it registers water usage then it is 100% certain that the water meter has a fault.

Not easy to check for air. Do you have a drain valve downstream of the meter? If so, make sure everything else in the house is turned off and then open the drain valve (bucket underneath). If you can see air aubbles in the water that comes out, then you definitely have air coming into the system. Also, if the water does not flow smoothly/continuously then there is a good chance that air is getting into the system.

I presume that the meter is properly installed with the outlet pipe running vertically to ensure that the meter is always full of water?

Piff Poff

Yes the meter is on a vertical pipe - who knows if it's properly installed though, it took the guy about 5 minutes. Thank you for your help.

Flossie and Jim

Time to go over the old bint's head I think - try speaking to your local councillor and tell them the trouble you are having with staff at the village and see if he can look into the matter for you.

printer

The water meters aren't quite clever enough to detect leaks as far as i know.
What the water company does is look at the readings and it can tell if there is a constant drain on the system. Normally water doesn't continually run 24/7 unless say a toilet is leaking.
So i would think it has detected water running continuously and therefore it flags up a possible problem.
We had them fitted recently and a friend had a leaking toilet that he hadn't fixed and on his first bill it warned him there may be a leak that needed fixing.

Piff Poff

While I can see what your saying makes some sense, after the 1st water bill being super high, we went and turned the water off, only turning it on for about 1.5 hours during the entire month, so it doesn't explain the leak detected stamp on the second months bill. Also you will have read what we did over the weekend, there is no constant drain that we can physically find.

...hmm...

I’ve worked in the water industry in the UK and no domestic water meter can detect a leak automatically. A leak is based on consumption and if the meter reading is higher than ‘normal’ then a leak notification is issued, sounds like the same system is in place for you.

To test for a leak, you need to check the following set-up:

Water Mains ---Outside stopcock---Meter---Internal stopcock- -House


If you shut the outside stopcock, the meter won’t move as there is no water to it.

If you find the internal stopcock (on feed to tank, under kitchen sink) then shut that but leave outside stopcock open, if meter moves, you have a leak on your supply. Note it is critical to find the internal stopcock, if you can’t find one, then you have to isolate every feed valve in the house.

If the meter doesn’t move when your internal stopcock is shut, then there is no leak on the supply and you’ve got something using water inside the house.

Things to check:

Are toilet cisterns overflowing?

Are any taps leaking?

Is the water tank overflowing?

For the cisterns and tank, if they are fed by float operated valves, these types do get sticky and so although they should be shut, the valve may still be open so you need to look carefully at them. Leaking taps are / should be obvious.

If you have done all of this and you can find no water use at all and can prove such, then challenge the water supplier and say that you can find no leak and there may be an issue with the meter e.g. it could have air in it (doubtful if its on a vertical leg), bits of dirt etc.

Most meters installed are calibrated so they will say that there is nothing wrong but if you can prove no use then they may change the meter out as a last recourse. Watch that they may also still want you to pay charges and you will need to be strong to counter their argument that you have fixed the leak hence the non-sign of one now.