Metering on Shared Water Supply

Doctor14

Hi All,

I have a shared water supply with my neighbour coming from the Mains (Several Neighbours have the same). There is 1 connection on the main on the public road and the supply branches off when it reaches our houses (on our property).

During the week, the water meter connections were installed. 2 meter connections were put out on the road in front of each house but only 1 was connected to the 1 water supply feeding our two houses. The other meter connection, while installed, is not connected to anything. The actual meters have not been installed yet and the builders said Dublin City Council would be along to install those.

So what does this mean? Will Irish Water charge us a shared bill (there are 4 people in my house and 2 next door)? Will the Council (or builders) fit another water supply to either of the houses? Will we have to pay for this if they do? Will we have to organise the supply ourselves with the Council charging us for the connection?

I have tried to get information on this but no use - no one seems to know (the builders are saying it is DCCs responsibility). All my neighbours are concerned as many of us have shared water connections.

Anyone have any idea as to what will happen?

dpofloinn

Do I understand you correctly, a water meter matrix box was installed for your property but it is not connected in any way to any pipework? If I am correct it is just an empty plastic box in the ground so if a meter is installed it will never register a reading.

What will most likely happen is we will all pay a flat fee which will rise annually and the metering will be just written off as an expensive mistake. However you need to contact the engineer/foreman responsible for over seeing the fitting in your area and make this stupidity known to, them also contact DCC via email and registered letter and keep records of all contact regarding the issue.

Irish water have no idea whats going on within their own organisation so trying to give you clear answers is not possible, you may end up in some kind of shared responsibility agreement with your neighbours with regards to meter charges, you may end up as I suspect with a flat annual fee

Doctor14

dpofloinn wrote: »

Do I understand you correctly, a water meter matrix box was installed for your property but it is not connected in any way to any pipework? If I am correct it is just an empty plastic box in the ground so if a meter is installed it will never register a reading.

Correct.

I did some asking. By placing a dead end water connection in the ground next to the main (shared) line going into my house, it allows them to connect to a separate feed in the future should I or my neighbour decide to do this. It costs them very little to put in a dead end connection when they are already working on the line but it costs a lot (and they have to shut off water to the whole street) if they subsequently have to dig up the main line to put in a new feed.

DCC said that it would still cost though to put in a new feed as there is some digging involved still.

Irish Water said they did not know what would happen with shared feeds in the future but that, for the moment, they will receive a flat fee.

I suspect there will be a requirement in the future to separate our shared feed into 2 and that we will have to pay for the cost of this (seeing as it is on our own property. I also suspect DCC or Irish water will charge us to connect to their feed.

Two of our neighbours spent the weekend separating out their water feed and the workers connected to them separately on Monday with no hassle or charge.

But what annoys me is that there seems to be little thought gone into shared feeds and that they really don't know what to do about them. I can see this coming back to bite me again in a year or 2.

antoinolachtnai

If the permanent concrete finish isn't down yet, why don't you dig it up now and put a pipe from the new meter box to the inside of your boundary? Even if you don't connect it up now, it will make it easy to connect it up later. Opening the pavement at a later stage requires a quite expensive permit.

(When they re-did my main and meter box, I took the opportunity to replace my old lead pipe with a new plastic pipe.)

Doctor14

Too late, Concrete down a week now. Only got 3 day to get ourselves sorted before they closed the whole thing in.

royster999

Doctor14 wrote: »

Too late, Concrete down a week now. Only got 3 day to get ourselves sorted before they closed the whole thing in.

How did this play out ?
In a similar situation and would be interested to hear if you are still paying a flat fee ?