Fixed water charge?

Yurple

Hi everybody.

I am renting a room in an apartment.

I have no problem paying for water used by me or both of us living here. I used to live in Holland where water charges are totally normall.

It's fine because having to pay for water reduces water waste like flushing the toilet way too long or leaving the tap on when brushing teeth.

BUT

I now find out that living in an apartment means the water charge will be a FIXED cost each month... It increases by the amount of people living in the apartment.

This is ridiculous don't you think? That destroys the whole purpose of charging for water ... I can leave the taps open all day and it would not make a difference ...

Why are they doing this and is there any way to get them to change to charging for what is actually used instead of a fixed cost?

Thanks ...

snubbleste

It's an assessed rate for nine months.
After that, if you show you used less water than the assessed rate allows, you will get a rebate.

This assumes you have a meter, which you've chosen not to state

athtrasna

snubbleste wrote: »

It's an assessed rate for nine months.
After that, if you show you used less water than the assessed rate allows, you will get a rebate.

This assumes you have a meter, which you've chosen not to state

The OP is in an apartment, it's next to impossible to fit meters to the majority of apartments in this country. I'm glad to live in an apartment and not to have to worry about water.

NinjaTruncs

Apartments aren't getting meters. It'll be a fixed rate on a continuous basis.

Yurple

Thanks everybody for the replies.

So it will be fixed forever. Damn.

zl1whqvjs75cdy

Just state that less people live in the apartment than actually do. Decreased bills ahoy.

Thoie

athtrasna wrote: »

The OP is in an apartment, it's next to impossible to fit meters to the majority of apartments in this country. I'm glad to live in an apartment and not to have to worry about water.

That's not correct. It's possible to fit a meter pretty much anywhere. Half the continent have meters fitted in buildings/apartments that have weird and wonderful plumbing systems . Irish Water's problem is that if they meter apartments, they can't just casually drive by to get the readings - someone would have to walk through the communal hallways to get the meter readings once a quarter or so.

There are, of course, a million (well, 4 or 5) around this, but given that they seem incapable of planning more than 10 minutes into the future, us apartment dwellers have no reason to bother our arses conserving water for the near future. In fact, if anyone would like buckets/tanks of water filled, pop over to my place and I'll run a hose out to you.

For the record, both Gormley and Hogan were made well aware of the issues that not metering apartments would cause for their "it's all about the conservation", so they've had 4 years to think about this.

For those who are interested, the original discussions about water charges started with the "renewed Programme for Government includes a commitment to introduce charges for water that is fair, significantly reduces waste and is easily applied." and was announced in the 2010 budget (issued late 2009).

murphaph

Indeed. An Irish solution if ever there was one. I just hope against hope that the medium term plan is to meter apartments as well. A single meter can at least be installed and the bill for the block as a whole divided by the management company according to the floor area of each unit. That's how it's done here for buildings where there's only a single central meter. It's no different to the management company handling the communal bin charges and passing them on to unit owners.

Thoie

murphaph wrote: »

Indeed. An Irish solution if ever there was one. I just hope against hope that the medium term plan is to meter apartments as well. A single meter can at least be installed and the bill for the block as a whole divided by the management company according to the floor area of each unit. That's how it's done here for buildings where there's only a single central meter. It's no different to the management company handling the communal bin charges and passing them on to unit owners.

That's inherently unfair though. People bought knowing the situation with bin charges, and while more people will generate more rubbish, it's not significantly more. However if you charge the same for all 3 beds, then the single person ends up paying the same for water as the people next door who have 10 people in a 3 bed apartment. It also does away with the child water allowance for people in apartments, so ends up costing them even more.


Changing subject slightly, one other thing to note with the geniuses in Irish Water and their fabulous PPS demands - if you have a second home that's metered, and a partner, then as you only need to put one PPS down per household, there's nothing to stop you giving the second PPS for the second home, thereby avoiding the flat charge of €125, and only paying for the water used when you're there.

MouseTail

athtrasna wrote: »

I'm glad to live in an apartment and not to have to worry about water.

Really? Ive measured my water usage, and am better off metered by a fair bit than the assessed charge, but them I'm fairly eco conscious. I'd be fairly unhappy about living in an unmetered apartment and paying the same as my neighbour who is wasteful with water. Apartment owners wouldn't generally tend to use a lot of water on their garden, car etc. It seems very unfair to apartment dwellers imo.

Yurple

Exactly!!

The two of us in this apartment have the pay the same as a very active family of 4...

It's a huge waste of money for us. A HUGE overpriced way of charging.

It's horrible and unfair !

I wish we could just put down 1 of us living here. We barely use water because of heavy work lifes. Paying for one fixed charge would justify it.

Otherwise I might as well run taps all day no problem. What a ridiculous way of "conserving water"

MouseTail wrote: »

Really? Ive measured my water usage, and am better off metered by a fair bit than the assessed charge, but them I'm fairly eco conscious. I'd be fairly unhappy about living in an unmetered apartment and paying the same as my neighbour who is wasteful with water. Apartment owners wouldn't generally tend to use a lot of water on their garden, car etc. It seems very unfair to apartment dwellers imo.

MouseTail

Its not my battle, but I am surprised at how quiet apartment dwellers have been on this. All the noise has been on the 'no consent', water falls from the sky crew, but those who are treated most inequitably by this have not had their voice heard.

Gatling

We apartment dwellers are quite happy with the current situation and im pretty sure the majority dont want metres

MouseTail

Well that explains it so Gatling.

Gatling

MouseTail wrote: »

Well that explains it so Gatling.

No not really ,

In my block 20 apartments all the water packs are sitting on the post boxes including the landlord packs ,
Imo nobody's going to actually pay in our complex theres zero consequence to not paying ,
No cut offs or restrictions to the water ,
We'll all probably get threatened in various letters and so on but I doubt that will have much effect ,

Yes we'll get standing charges along with the likes of the tv licences demands they will be put in a drawer along with the rest of the junk ,

Personally im going to wait and see I know my landlord isnt paying to the point he dropped in his landlord pack into us lastweek ,

My issue is lack of information about how exactly this standing charge was decided along with the allowences

athtrasna

murphaph wrote: »

Indeed. An Irish solution if ever there was one. I just hope against hope that the medium term plan is to meter apartments as well. A single meter can at least be installed and the bill for the block as a whole divided by the management company according to the floor area of each unit. That's how it's done here for buildings where there's only a single central meter. It's no different to the management company handling the communal bin charges and passing them on to unit owners.

Disastrous idea. It's hard enough to get management fees out of some people as it is, I don't want my management fees going up because my neighbours can't /won't pay their share of the water bill. Bins are totally different as it's a flat rate and have been included in the fees from day 1

the groutch

murphaph wrote: »

Indeed. An Irish solution if ever there was one. I just hope against hope that the medium term plan is to meter apartments as well. A single meter can at least be installed and the bill for the block as a whole divided by the management company according to the floor area of each unit. That's how it's done here for buildings where there's only a single central meter. It's no different to the management company handling the communal bin charges and passing them on to unit owners.

floor space has nothing to do with water usage though.

murphaph

Thoie wrote: »

That's inherently unfair though. People bought knowing the situation with bin charges, and while more people will generate more rubbish, it's not significantly more. However if you charge the same for all 3 beds, then the single person ends up paying the same for water as the people next door who have 10 people in a 3 bed apartment. It also does away with the child water allowance for people in apartments, so ends up costing them even more.

It's not perfectly fair no, but there is at least some logic to it...more people generally need more room. Of course there are flats with 10 migrant workers hot-swapping beds and that's not fair on the other occupants of the building, but at least the building as a whole is getting metered and there is SOME incentive not to waste water. Generally it will also force management companies into fitting meters to individual apartments. That's what happened in our building last year in fact.

The only truly fair solution is a meter on each unit. A flat fee is much less likely to see this happen IMO.

murphaph

the groutch wrote: »

floor space has nothing to do with water usage though.

Nothing has anything to do with usage except usage. A flat of several occupants of working people might use much less water than a flat of a couple of the dole. The only truly fair solution is a meter in each unit, but even in countries like Germany where metering is long established, you get lots of buildings with a single meter.

murphaph

athtrasna wrote: »

Disastrous idea. It's hard enough to get management fees out of some people as it is, I don't want my management fees going up because my neighbours can't /won't pay their share of the water bill. Bins are totally different as it's a flat rate and have been included in the fees from day 1

It is not disastrous from the viewpoint of the average compliant customer of IW who will end up facing increased bills to cover the non-paying ones. At the end of the day apartment living means organising stuff like this under the auspices of the management company. It makes no difference if the charge is static or varies slightly each year, so the comparison with the bins is entirely valid.

Thoie

murphaph wrote: »

It's not perfectly fair no, but there is at least some logic to it...more people generally need more room. Of course there are flats with 10 migrant workers hot-swapping beds and that's not fair on the other occupants of the building, but at least the building as a whole is getting metered and there is SOME incentive not to waste water. Generally it will also force management companies into fitting meters to individual apartments. That's what happened in our building last year in fact.

The only truly fair solution is a meter on each unit. A flat fee is much less likely to see this happen IMO.

Perhaps a compromise is that Irish Water could provide the individuals meters per apartment (for "free" like they are for other people), and the manpower to fit them (as they do for houses), and the management company agrees to take on the overhead of meter reading?

I'm really against having a communal water meter - as I said, it removes the allowances from people with kids, it doesn't provide any incentive to the individual to reduce consumption and will force struggling management companies further into debt as it's yet another bill that a percentage of people aren't paying.

Yes, the management company could sue the non-payers, but that is costly in and of itself, and the other residents just end up paying for that too, without guaranteeing that the delinquent will actually pay up in a timely manner.

murphaph

To be honest silly allowances for kids and adults alike should not be handled through IW. Things like that are much easier handled through the tax and social welfare systems. Just give parents a larger tax credit for their kids or give welfare recipients more for their dependents etc. and charge everyone full price for the water to relieve the burden of administering these allowances. There then wouldn't even be any need for IW to have PPS details etc.

There's already similar in place in Ireland: Those over 70 get a telephone allowance and a winter fuel allowance. The telephone company doesn't need to reduce your bill, they just charge full price and you get your payment from the state. Same with ESB or Gas. Water should be handled in a similar manner and the reason it isn't is to "soften the blow" and make it not seem so bad at the start, even though this comes with an enormous administration overhead for IW which will end up being paid for by its customers!

Thoie

murphaph wrote: »

To be honest silly allowances for kids and adults alike should not be handled through IW. Things like that are much easier handled through the tax and social welfare systems. Just give parents a larger tax credit for their kids or give welfare recipients more for their dependents etc. and charge everyone full price for the water to relieve the burden of administering these allowances. There then wouldn't even be any need for IW to have PPS details etc.

There's already similar in place in Ireland: Those over 70 get a telephone allowance and a winter fuel allowance. The telephone company doesn't need to reduce your bill, they just charge full price and you get your payment from the state. Same with ESB or Gas. Water should be handled in a similar manner and the reason it isn't is to "soften the blow" and make it not seem so bad at the start, even though this comes with an enormous administration overhead for IW which will end up being paid for by its customers!

I'm fairly sure that their worry is that with the number of people saying they're not going to pay, if the state pays the "allowance", Irish Water may never see a penny of it (or not any time soon at least). However the household allowance is rubbish. There's only one quantity allowed, regardless of the number of adults, so this malarkey of needing your PPS to prove your eligible is nonsense. Just discount the first x litres off every bill, and leave it at that (the way my mobile company don't charge me for my "free" minutes). Their fear is that people with second homes may, gasp, only end up paying for the small amount of water they use when they're there at the weekend or whatever. Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt that there are millions of these second homes around the place that are going to cost all that much extra. They're already connected, they want to charge them a flat fee no matter how much they use - just leave them be.

The social welfare could very easily pop a letter out to everyone in receipt of children's allowance saying "you have 15 children". You could then include that on your application form to Irish Water, and they could stop this data protection and PR disaster around the PPS numbers.