In brief:
- Irish Water installed a meter early February 2015
- They left - but his water was still turned off. They had to come back to turn on the stopcock.
- Later on he noticed his kitchen tap constantly dripping.
Plumber - €50 - Grit washed in the supply from a careless meter installation had ended up preventing the tap washer from closing properly. - A weeks later he happened to be in his back garden and noticed a constant flow of water in the downpipe from his roof gutter. It wasn't raining.
Plumber (after a week's wait) - €50 - Ballvalve in attic tank full of grit, etc. - He's down a total of €100
I was interested in seeing his meter and the workmanship of what could be seen.
Photos and description in the post below.
Apart from the poor workmanship, the cement spatter inside the box and the fact that the AMR unit hid the last 2 digits of the reading from view, I noticed something else.
If that meter had started off at a zero reading, then it was very high 2 months later. I felt that this was more than his leaking tap and ball valve would have accounted for. I made a note of the reading (less the last two invisible digits - obviously)
I rang him two weeks later and asked him to check the reading. It was clear from this new reading that he had an ongoing major leak somewhere.
He contacted Irish Water. It was June before they got back. He was sent a contract to sign. Eight pages or so of legalese intended to protect Irish Water's ass from everything.
I had advised him of the leak on April 21st. Until Irish Water came to investigate, he had the stress of wondering what sort of costs he might be exposed to if the leak was under his house. Even if the leak was under his garden, he had to wonder what sort of mess would be left behind by the First Fixers. The standard evident from the initial meter installation was not encouraging.
Along came an Irish Water contractor.
Yes. He had a leak. 8 litres per minute. Whoa!
His neighbour also had a leak. 6 litres per minute. Whoa again!
You see. This sort of thing is why the government and Irish Water keep banging on about the value of water meters. They won't be used for billing until 2019, but in the meantime they are discovering all these leaks.
Am I right? Am I right? We're talking multiple Olympic-sized swimming pools that could be filled by all these leaks in houses. Overall they estimate 6% to 7% of processed water is wasted via such leaks. This waste is not as high as the 50% leaking via the mains, but it's still quite a lot.
My friend's and his neighbour's leaks would not have been discovered had not those meters been installed.
.......Am I right? Am I right?
............... eh......... No...... not quite
Guess what?
My friend's leak was right at the meter - under the pavement - not even in his garden. His neighbour's leak was about a foot from the meter.
The contractor was a bit embarrassed. He grudgingly admitted that the process of back-filling the hole and tamping down the concrete could impose a lot of strain on the pipework and cause leaks.
Presumably he was really, really careful backfilling it this time around.
Brilliant.
Irish Water install meters and trigger massive leaks at some of them,
They then claim a success story. The meter has discovered a massive leak. We've all heard the propaganda.
Yes it has - but the leak was caused by Irish Water.
Statistical?
I didn't go looking for that situation. I'm not a member of any activist group. I'm simply describing what I personally encountered by accident. The two particular leaks described above sort of looked for me :)
A third leak
I saw another one a few days ago close to where I live. It was clear that major leak was happening at the meter box. There was a digger, a truck, a jeep and traffic lights for a temporary 1-way traffic system at the location for an entire day.
This particular leak must have been at the supply side of the meter and stop valve. The guys were working in a fountain until they could manage to put in a new stop valve on the supply pipe.
The leak was absolutely at the meter position. When they packed up, the only sign of excacations was the new concrete around the box.
((Note added on October 7th:
Oh look! Four days later - there's a pool of water forming at the meter box. I suppose the digger, lorry and jeep + traffic lights will have to return for at least another day.
I suppose this would then make for 2 "fixed leaks" claimed by Irish Water.- for a leak that they caused in the first place and then did not fix properly when they got back to it.))
These are leaks that I just happened to become aware of. For whatever reason, I have not become aware of leaks further away from meters.
Three is not a significant sample. However .....
There is a systematic reason for large numbers of leaks to be at the meters rather than away from them.
The installion work appears to be sloppy and rushed. Consider this photo of a one particular meter box before backfill.
In the case above, that's 14 very potential leaks to be triggered by the imposed strains.
Some leaks might become apparent before the backfilling - which would be good - provided that they don't just backfill into the pool of water anyway.
Oh wait!
That amazing 'Lego' plumbing is clearly designed for unskilled labour who can't do any sort of pipe-bending.
Even so, we can see right-angle joints where the pipes are entering at a slight angle and under strain. This is the kiss of death for good joints - particularly when done by unskilled labout in a hurry.
'Lego'-style also adds to the cost of the material side of the installation. There are maybe 4 or 5 fittings per meter installation that would not need to be bought if they used pre-formed bends. Repeat the cost of that 2 million times.
Add the cost of the water leaking aferwards.
Add the cost of coming back to fix the really bad leaks.
Add the cost of water leaking that does not trigger the continuous flow alarm levels set for the meters. (No don't add that. Such leaks just go into the bill as consumption.)
Forget about the stress on householders informed about a leak and waiting for a resolution.
Apart from leaks at the meter connections, it is obvious that the process of digging and cutting imposes strains on the uncovered pipework - both on house and supply side.
There is a saying: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Irish Water break things near the things that they are 'fixing'.
The Universe is playing with our lives in strange ways
On October 5th, 2015, RTE did some more regurgitation of Irish Water spin.
Morning Ireland had Gerry from Irish Water on talking about the First Fix scheme and how Irish Water are fixing leaks detected by meters.
Guess what ads started up in the breaks? Yup! Irish Water fixing leaks.
This is where the strange universe intervened.
Morning Ireland tweeted this headline and photo afterwards:
"Repairs after water meters identify leaks" - is the headline.
The implication of the photo under that headline is that the leaks are at the meter boxes.
If fairmess, it was proably "Do we have a stock photo of some Irish Water digging going on"
At the same, the photo may be bang on the nail for the headline.
Thank you Morning Ireland stock-photo-chooser.
Thank you mysterious Universe. Hilarious win!
PR, propaganda, spin
"We're fixing huge leaks" is a great PR move. Make a huge song and dance about fixing leaks. Just don't mention that you're causing many huge leaks in the first place.
Meanwhile in the water mains
On a slightly related note, here's a PR conflict: How to advise people of disruption to water supply but not have people notice? Ooooh - difficult.
About 50% of treated water is believed to be leaking from mains piping. Contrast that with about 6% believed to leak in/around houses. Yet €540 Million spent on installing meters - causing major leaks in the process. The meters will not be used for billing until 2019 - at which stage many will replacing.
Meanwhile, the @IWcare Twitter account spews a constant stream (no pun intended) of advisories er "burst mains". Have a look at this Twitter search https://twitter.com/search?q=%40iwcare%20burst%20main&src=typd
Early on October 8th, I stopped counting backwards at 300 "burst mains". The timeline was from early June.
Early June was when the @IWcare account took over from @IrishWater announcements of customer related issues. Here are "burst main" announcements from before then. https://twitter.com/search?q=%40irishwater%20burst%20main&src=typd
These are "burst" mains. These are the ones that call attention to themselves as spectacular water features.
Before they became "burst", they were invisibly leaking their part of the 50% of treated water leaking from mains.
Irish Water could detect these in advance by regional metering on the mains poples. They don't. They spend €540 Million installing domestic meters (and creating leaks).
More PR
Here's another great PR move. Claim that lots of people are getting bills that are under the capped charges. Just don't mention that some meters are clearly faulty and under-recording the actual volumes used.
See my current post on IrishWaterMeters.blogspot.ie for this one.
If you came to this post via a specific link to this single post, you can see the entire Irish Water Mistakes blog (including this post) at IrishWaterMistakes.blogspot.ie
