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!
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