| The Breakroom > The Water Cooler |
| Water meter. |
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| Bluechip:
--- Quote from: garym on June 07, 2014, 06:49:24 PM ---I've thought about having a meter fitted for quite a long while, but keep putting it off because we have lead pipe to the stop tap which is behind the kitchen cupboards and which I don't really want disturbing. They will fit in the pavement outside if I insist but will charge me £160 if they think it can be fitted inside. We can probably save that in a year though. Can I ask anyone who has one fitted, how they are read remotely, are they connected to power and phone lines? Gary --- End quote --- Gary: AFAIK they are read by a van which has some RF chit-chat with the meter on the way past. The meter has no electrical connections to any thing at all. [ Apart from Electrical Earth Bonding ]. EDIT Just had a look at mine. It has 433MHz on it ... so it is RF. :thumbup: EDIT2 It runs on a Lithium Battery. http://www.temetra.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/EverBlu_Cyble.pdf T'others: Lead pipe is probably OK in a hard water area. The pipe gets scaled up inside so no water is in effective contact with the lead. You do need to run off a fair bit before use if you've had standing water in the pipe while away etc. In a soft water area I believe the recommendation is that they should be replaced. Dunno about PVC pipe. IIRC all the UK stuff is HDPE. VT has the right idea. Get Moses in to wallop the local geology and Hey Presto! Free clean water, no meter, no Bills. Now that's gotta be a good scheme ... :thumbup: Dave BC |
| awemawson:
Lead is virtually insoluble in cold water. You need very unusual circumstances with other trace elements in the water for any lead salts to dissolve. Now hot water is another matter. |
| garym:
Bluechip, thanks for the reply. I thought it must be something like that. I could't see them getting an electrical supply to where the meter was in each house. Re: Lead pipe I'm aware of the risks. I campaigned in the eighties to have lead removed from petrol. When I first moved in twenty years ago I didn't want the upheaval or expense of replacing the pipe as it runs under the front garden and hall so I replaced the lead from the stop tap onwards. To reduce the risk further if it has stood in the pipe for a while (overnight say) we run the tap to clear it. After twenty years I'm only slightly MAD. :loco: Gary |
| BaronJ:
--- Quote from: garym on June 08, 2014, 04:17:14 AM ---Bluechip, thanks for the reply. I thought it must be something like that. I could't see them getting an electrical supply to where the meter was in each house. Re: Lead pipe I'm aware of the risks. I campaigned in the eighties to have lead removed from petrol. When I first moved in twenty years ago I didn't want the upheaval or expense of replacing the pipe as it runs under the front garden and hall so I replaced the lead from the stop tap onwards. To reduce the risk further if it has stood in the pipe for a while (overnight say) we run the tap to clear it. After twenty years I'm only slightly MAD. :loco: Gary --- End quote --- Hi Gary, If you have converted to copper after the internal stop tap, the water people will fit a meter in the copper. One of the neighbours had one fitted after the lead work. It sits in the copper pipe coming down through the ceiling and sticks out away from the wall. It looks atrocious ! I would have refused to allow the meter to be placed there. They told him that it had to be there so you couldn't connect anything before it or bypass it. Mine is in the street. I had to be able to turn the water supply off when the kitchen was refitted. When I went out into the street to turn off the water at the stop tap, it was full of brick, stones and mud. So I complained to Yorkshire Water and demanded that they do something about it. They did ! They came out, dug up the pavement and put a new chamber in, complete with a new stop tap and meter. All at no charge. I did have to agree to having the meter, but at that point is was a no brainer anyway. When I think about how much we have paid in water bills, I reckon that I've more than paid for the work they carried out... |
| vtsteam:
It was pure luck that I found the spring when I first built the house. There was a wet spot in the ground about 300 feet into the woods surrounded by what looked like a semicircle of stones -- mostly buried. But they looked like they'd been placed. So I brought a shovel, being a curious type, and dug around there, and found the remains of a wood panel door, which must have been used at one time as a cover. Digging further revealed the semicircle was a loose stone wall and it ended against ledge rock. A lot of muck came out and muddy water started to spread around and refill whatever I shoveled. Didn't smell to good to start with! Old leaaves and mud. But I kept on digging and cleared the whole thing out. It was maybe two feet deep, a cistern of sorts, and at the bottom, solid rock with a 2 inch hole out of which clear cold water flowed now that it was freed up. I realized that it was an old spring well. Why it was here in the forest I have no idea. Anyway, I dug around the old loose fill wall, and built a larger cistern with mortared stone and brought it up above the ground level. I put a pipe into it about half way up, yet still underground, and led that off to the house. I had to constantly evict frogs while I worked, because they seem to smell water and came from all directions to try out the new pool. They were very persistent! I'd move them 100 feet away, and see them hopping back through the leaves nearby in ten minutes. Finally I affixed a cover, and that put an end to the public pool. I sent water samples up to the state testing lab in Burlington and the analysis showed that we have really good water. It also tastes good -- people note that when visiting. I built a second masonry cistern under the house that holds 250 gallons. It gets the water via gravity feed from the spring. A shallow well pump at the house cistern pressurizes the lines in the house. Overflow from the second cistern is piped back downhill toward a nearby stream. The spring water runs continuously except in a severe drought, as we had a few years ago. But then drilled wells dried up too in the area. The lines to the forest cistern run above ground, except that we cover it with leaves in the fall. Actually it is gradually getting buried as a result. It never freezes, no matter how cold the weather -- or hasn't in the last 12 years. I once did live in Burlington, and had a house with a water meter. Glad to have lucked into this present water and freer life style! |
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