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insane: I suspect the water readers are not coming by every two months like they say, and are just making the numbers up, then when they actually do get a real reading you either get a really small bill or a really huge one.
It turned out that 2 of the dials were jammed together in the council meter meaning that it was reading 10X higher than what it should.
Also im assuming the OP doesn't own an old cross lease property with a shared meter. Yes there are still lots of them out there. Watercare just read the common meter and divide the bill by the number of units. So if your neighbours use lots of water you will be subsidising them.
1. MISREAD
2. UNUSUAL CONSUMPTION
3. ESTIMATED BILLS
4. SWITCHED METERS
5. STOLEN WATER
6. METER REMOVED OR DISCONNECTED BUT ACCOUNT NOT UPDATED
7. FAULTY METER
8. SHARED METERS
Aredwood: The only way to prove 100% is to buy your own water meter and get a plumber to install it inline with the council one. .
pctech: You're not allowed to. You have to have them install it, and if you have 2 meters there is a charge of $150 yearly for inspection.
I think pctech is talking about an IRRIGATION meter: it is a water meter dedicated to outdoors use only (e.g. watering the garden) that must be installed by Watercare and inspected yearly. Irrigation meters are equipped with a backflow prevention device that must be inspected yearly at a cost of $150. (FYI, the device is installed to avoid contaminated water backing up into the Watercare supply network: irrigation meters are often used to feed tanks full of pesticide, insecticide, fungicide, etc. - at an orchard farm let's say - and Watercare does not want any of that flowing back into their network when there is a sudden loss of pressure, due to a burst main for example).
Irrigation meters can benefit households with big gardens because they don’t attract a wastewater charge (as all the water measured by an irrigation meter is deemed to soak into the ground, not flushed into the sewer network). However there are installation costs to pay, and your household meter get charged 100% wastewater instead of 78.5% after that.
Aredwood: So how does having the same water go through 2 meters instead of one [b]reak any laws or violate any contracts? Since you are not touching the council meter or any pipework on the councils side of their meter.
Correct. What you do with your private network is up to you. As long as you don't touch the Watercare meter and its meter box, you can install any number of meters you want down the line. However, just for testing purposes to answer MrTomato’s concern, asking a plumber to install a check meter on his private network would cost a lot more than requesting for a Watercare technician to do a meter test (i.e. attaching a calibrated meter to his garden tap temporarily, let some water run through, and then compared with the reading of the house meter). The meter alone would cost $150 + labour incl. digging.
Watercare on-site meter test = $150 – see http://www.watercare.co.nz/SiteCollectionDocuments/AllPDFs/Domestic_Charges.pdf
You can never have enough Volvos!
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