Ze Flashing Lights!

Those of more mature years will remember the wonderful spoof TV comedy series "Allo! Allo!" from thirty odd years ago - I'm sure it's still shown on some Freeview channel somewhere (or else BBC will show it when they finish "Dad's Army" again).  It was all silliness about a cafe owner who was reluctantly involved with the French Resistance in WW2, in case you're wondering.  One of their running jokes was how the knobs on the elderly mother's bed flashed when "London" was calling "Night'awk"on the radio.

Why am I telling you this? Well, we have experienced the same sort of flashing lights over some period of time. The problem was usually associated with high winds (in my trees) and so it seemed to me to be something to do with the above ground cables which supply the mains electricity to all the houses here. The supply to our house is via a cable hung from the terraced house on one side, through the trees to the corner at the front left; there it splits and our feed goes left around the fascia while the feed for next door routes to the right along our fascia (old photo right; the cable is not visible but goes from the top left corner of the picture to a point above my head, level with the gutter).  I was misled by the same symptom happening to other people locally which caused me to believe that it was affecting a good number of houses.  When we moved in I had some interesting times with the electricity supply (which I mentioned in this entry) as the old cable was perished and totally covered by the ivy.  Although it took a fair few phone calls, the job did get done properly and so I thought it was unlikely that the flashing issue was with my end of the cable.

However, I got fed up with the flashing in the high winds a couple of weeks ago - it wasn't just the flashing, but the fact that it tripped our answerphone which then reset itself saying "Answer on; calls will be answered in five rings".  When the power dip is repetitive, you hear "Answer on - Answer on - Ans - Answer -Ans" etc which is really annoying when you know you are alone in the house.  Curiously the power issue only seemed to affect the phone.  No digital clocks reset themselves and there was no other symptom, until the day when (unusually) I had the digital radio on and it all went garbled for some time; it only came good when I switched it off and on.  Then later the same day it went off entirely for over a minute and I decided this was too much so called the electricity supplier.  Of course, I got cut off once making that call by the answerphone resetting itself!  Aaaaagh!

Anyway, at last the problem was reported and they promptly came with the emergency team.  To my surprise they reckoned there was indeed a problem with the new connection - it had overheated (WHY?) and melted the plastic sheathing.  Worryingly, they said that it did happen sometimes even with new bits (but I'm a Chartered Engineer and I like to know WHY!). It's been replaced now and the problem has not recurred, so tranquility rules again.

The Saga of the Water Meter

In almost every decision on restoring this house, I deliberately tended to adopt the long term solution.  After all, we expect to be living here for a fair while, so the more expensive long term solutions were always worth considering as we would derive the benefit.  One such was the sheepswool loft insulation (see this page); this was quite expensive but it allows the ceilings to breathe, and is so much nicer to work with than the glass stuff which irritates.  Another has been the acrylic secondary glazing (see this page), which has made the house so much more comfortable, and in any case will have paid for itself in two years or less.  Other investments are purely financial, based on the expectation that we will still own the house in ten or more years' time; one such item was the water meter.  We had one in our rented house in 2010, and the experience was that, with just two of us living there, the meter had saved us about £150 per year.  So it was a no-brainer to have one fitted here and, quite naturally, I wanted it done early in the restoration.

I had identified that the mains supply for the house had a stop cock under a plastic cover in the pavement; there were two stop cocks inside the house; the main one was in the hall and fed a flexible (washing machine quality?) pipe which went to the bathroom above and had supplied the cold tank (which had already been removed to the garden!).  The other supply went to the old extension, and I had had the plumber fit a new internal tap so that we could properly attach a hose for the plastering and floor laying.  When that was working I had the plumber feed the other supply through to the kitchen so that it was ready there, but out of the way of planned work.

So, early in 2011 I made an application to Thames Water for a meter.  They sent out a workman (actually a contractor) who looked at everything and asked me if I wanted an internal or external meter.  I said "external if possible", not wanting to have a meter getting in the way of the kitchen floor and plaster work about to be tackled.  Little did I know.  A crew was sent without delay, and they very speedily fitted a meter under the pavement.  OK so far!

There was an amusing small glitch later in the year - when doing the extension we found that the water supply in the old extension actually carried on under the brick wall separating our back gardens and fed our neighbour's outside tap.  This would not normally be a concern, but in fact it had been used as the sole supply for the construction of a £3 million building at the back; this was an arrangement which preceded the sale of next door, and when they purchased it, the builders had an obligation to pay his water bill for a period.  As it happens, the construction had been completed about two months before I asked for the meter, which was fortuitous.  My neighbour admitted that he had been puzzled that his water bill was completely normal!

Having moved in (July 2011), I had a very low bill the next month, followed in February 2012 by a quite reasonable one of £91 for a six month period.  You can imagine my consternation when in August 2012 I received my second six month bill for £274.  Now, the house next door (not our other half but a separate cottage) had been rented out from February 2012, having been empty for over a year; it was not difficult to do a quick bit of detective work and spot that there was no other water main cover in the pavement for 15 metres, and so clearly they had fitted the meter to a shared supply. D'oh!

I can write this now in the cool light of reflection of the last five months.  That time was regularly punctuated with me telephoning Thames Water and getting not much satisfaction.  It took a considerable amount of persistence to resolve this issue, and their first level help desk staff became predictable in their complete lack of ability to achieve anything.   Their typical response was to say that someone would call in 6 working days but nothing happened.  One really stupid thing that someone did was to rescind all their bills back to when the meter was fitted (although the meter readings WERE valid and acceptable to me for almost a year), and then send out a bill for the standard rate for April 2011 to April 2013, so that I owed them £789, payable at once!

If you have the same sort of issue, my top tip is that at the first excuse you say the magic words "I want to escalate this issue".  Once I had been passed on to the "Escalation Department" I had much better service and progress was made, ultimately successfully.  Sadly for me that did not happen until I had wasted nine weeks and many phone calls in trying.  A second top tip is to keep a good record of your phone calls; it really gets the attention of the Manager in the "Escalation Department" when you can name the idiot who failed to do what he promised four months ago, and when you give a string of names and dates they quickly realize that you do indeed have a point.  The other thing to remember is that it is (usually) not the fault of the person to whom you are speaking, but one of their colleagues, so a plaintive sob story with a hint of desperation gets a far better response than shouting at the poor unfortunate one who was unlucky enough to get your call.

The result for me was that in order to have a meter it had to be internal.  Of course, this would have been much easier if it had been done before installing our new kitchen (June 2011), so there was a bit of an issue as to where to put it.  The only sensible place was under the sink, and Thames Water said that their installer needed six inches "all the way around" to fit the meter.  Now, it is natural to fit pipes within two inches of the wall and floor, isn't it?  This is what my plumber had done, and they wanted me to sort out the pipes before they would send someone to fit the meter.  I rather griped at that generous use of space which would have used the entire space underneath my sink for just the meter, and asked if my plumber could fit the meter as well.  This did not seem to be allowable, but they sent a man to look at the possibilities; he actually brought a meter with him, which somehow I persuaded him to leave and I then paid my plumber £96 to fit it right at the back of  the sink cupboard.  Good job!  All up and running.

I have today received their latest bill and I'm £165 in credit.  They wouldn't pay my £96 but the nice young woman has used a low figure for estimating the consumption if I'd had a meter which gave valid readings.  This has (deliberately or inadvertently?) given that sum back to me, so I'll let that drop, as I am really fed up with phoning their hepdesk!