Water charges for excessive usage

Benedict wrote: »

You are still missing the point. The proposal now is that some pay for the excessive use of others. What if you were told that you had to pay for your ESB but you also had to pay for the family next door who didn't have an electricity meter? Would you pay? Or refuse?

I was just about to post the same.
If people were to apply the same thought process to how they want to start charging for water to electric metering / charging, they might start to to see the gross ineptitude and unfairness of the proposal

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

True, I know several that removed the meter and filled the hole with concrete. ;-)

So do I, and the court date has been set up.

One thing that won’t happen is that some will have to pay while others smirk on the sidelines.

That won’t happen, my friend.

Make no mistake about that.

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

What court date? The concrete has been curing for over 4 years now. ;-)


It will though.


See above.

See above.

Don’t know what point you are trying and failing to make, my friend.

Do try to enlighten us.

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

You said a court date was set, what are you talking about ?

Can’t you read, Baggy?

I’m aware of several court dates pending for folk who interfered with water meters.

From usually reliable sources, my friend.

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

That's great, none of the people I know that removed the water meter have gotten notice of a court date. You need to be clearer when you say something.




You should advise your source about the penalties of breaching GDPR . ;-)

Surely you don’t know everyone who interfered with water meters Baggy?

Or are you on some national anti water meter campaign or something.

Rest assured Middle Ireland won’t be hoodwinked twice.

astrofool wrote: »

So, your question is, how does a company with a specialty in measuring water going through a pipe, measure water going through a pipe?
Sure, it's easier if there's a meter, but there's multiple other ways to measure water going through a pipe without a meter.
Or do you think, that we as a society, don't have the technological means to measure water going through arbitrary pipes, bearing in mind we're marking 50 years since putting man on the moon, which, coincidentally, was one of the most advanced feats of plumbing engineering in getting all the various liquids (and gases) used on the mission to the correct place safely, in a measurable fashion.
But sure, no meter, impossible to measure, the protesters "win".

Please provide more details of the tech NASA have supplied Irish Water. Do go on. It must be more than a coincidence that NASA haven't gone there since 1972, the same decade Fianna Fail first scrapped water charges.

astrofool wrote: »

Fortunately rocket scientist level expertise aren't needed for house plumbing, ring up any random plumber (emergency callout as you seem to want an answer now) and offer them money to measure water going through a pipe.

If rocket scientist level expertise isn't needed why are you mentioning them in this thread!?!

How long are you going to be paying your plumber for, given that the default annual allowance is 213,000 litres?

MonkieSocks wrote: »

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=110717612&postcount=15

So... a meter then?

K.Flyer wrote: »

It will always be a meter, portable, temporary or otherwise

Shh, I can hear the friction from the brain cells overheating.

Boggles wrote: »

If it's that simple, begs the question why they spent all that money replacing and installing new meters.

Because the easiest way is by using installed water meters, this does not mean that installing a water meter is the only way to do it....

Benedict wrote: »

Okay, as we know there are entire estates of many hundreds of houses where no meters have been installed. (There may well be business and apartment blocks within the estate - but let's not even go there).
So IW decide "We suspect there is too much water being used here. Got to investigate further".
What is the next step? Put a meter at the entrance and exit of the estate. This shows too much water being used for the number of residences.


So would anyone like to say what the next step is please?


Of course there are machines to measure water flow. (They're called meters.)
If a meter is not installed in the houses IW "suspect", then a plumber would need to be present 24/7/365 with a hand-held meter. (Just because you use a lot on the Monday doesn't mean you do the same on other days.)


The truth is that if you don't have a meter installed, you'll be able to forget about usage and fines and the rest of us will have to pick up the bill. This system is clearly discriminatory and will not last 5 minutes if challenged in the courts.


And it will be challenged.

So if anyone knows how IW intend to make non-metered houses pay fines, then please share with us.

Because I certainly don't know how they can succeed - and neither do they!

Hands up here.....

Next step.... no one pays till everybody pays.

Court challenge.


Brenner will not pay one brown cent under the current debacle, no sir.

Matt Barrett wrote: »

FG blew any chance of IW or metering being taken seriously when they gave the contract to Denis O'Brien and that how Noonan went about it is still under investigation doesn't help.

FG had no interest in comprehensive Water Metering, conservation or quality.

There goal was to package it into a billing system and sell it off.

Get 50 odd percent of the properties metered, you don't need the rest.

From the link above on the report of the Committee on Future Funding.

The Joint Committee on the Future Funding of Domestic Water Services (‘the Committee’) supports the concept of a referendum on the issue of water services continuing in public ownership and believes that public ownership should be enshrined in the Constitution as an extra measure of protection against any privatisation.

Now this could have been done all ready, but FG decided that a referendum on Blasphemy was more important.

:pac:

Boggles wrote: »

So tell us.

How do you accurately measure annual usage of 100's of 1000's of houses without a permanent meter?

Benedict pretty much has it, you can measure at the estate/apartment block/part of estate level using standard flow meters, narrow it down to a few houses, then monitor the few houses that have excessive flow for a few days, once the likely culprit is identified, they can be informed and further action taken (including proving that it wasn't them, but this can all be done using temporary flow meters). It's more work than just using an installed meter, but not really that hard to do or implement.

You seem to imply that there is some magic spell that has happened because some people didn't get meter's installed, and they've beaten the system because they get to waste a valuable resource, without getting too far off topic, it's the same kind of circular arguments being used around anti-vax and other debates "Oh, but if they can do that, why did they have to install meters?!" "They all loved Denis O'Brien, he caused the mess" "How dare they charge me money for something that falls from the sky, sure isn't it free, all taxpayers should pay it, and let the non-taxpayers get it for free" "Why don't we not charge anyone until there is no leaks in the system, but we won't raise money to fix the leaks until they've fixed the leaks".

I mean, people know these things, but they're so entrenched in a "gubberment is bad" mindset, that they can't understand that measuring water flow is a pretty easy thing to do, if a bit labour intensive.

astrofool wrote: »

Benedict pretty much has it, you can measure at the estate/apartment block/part of estate level using standard flow meters, narrow it down to a few houses, then monitor the few houses that have excessive flow for a few days, once the likely culprit is identified, they can be informed and further action taken (including proving that it wasn't them, but this can all be done using temporary flow meters). It's more work than just using an installed meter, but not really that hard to do or implement...
I mean, people know these things, but they're so entrenched in a "gubberment is bad" mindset, that they can't understand that measuring water flow is a pretty easy thing to do, if a bit labour intensive.

Except the gubberment have provided no basis for what you are proposing as excessive water is based on an annual allowance. Measuring a few days proves nothing.

And, it'll be pretty bleedin obvious to people in the area that there are guys in the area monitoring the water use.

Are you going to leave the guys with the flow meters all year? Labour intensive is an understatement!

The only people you're going to catch with your plan is people whose leak is so bad they exceed their annual allowance in a few days.