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So.. my day..

 

It was made very much brighter by the unexpected arrival of my older Daughter, Son in Law and Beautiful Grandkids. They'd been out for Lunch somewhere and ended up here.  Kids both brought me handwritten Birthday Cards on which Gracie (7) wrote: 'Happy Birthday..73..Congratulations',

.and 11 year old Ben wrote: 'Happy Birthday.. you managed to stay alive for another year!!!'

These Kids are nothing if not direct...:laugh:

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Just got back from QMC again........the last eight days have been a bit Traumatic to say the least,,...blood tests,,X-rays,,and today a visit to a Consultant........cut a long story short......problem

Result........CT Scans all clear......just got letter..been sweating for a fortnight......

Two years ago today..........my life changed forever,,,about this time i was on my way down to the operating theatre for what turned out to be a ten hour operation...........its been life changing in

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Today I am having my broadband changed to fibre (whatever that is - it is going to take a visit from Openreach to change line and the Sky engineer). 
So I have been moving furniture and rugs about.

So far Jj has:

1.  Kept dropping his ball on the rug whilst I was rolling it up so I had to keep throwing it to get him out the way. 
2. Sat on the armchair whilst I was trying to move it. It is a recliner so it weighs a bit anyway. Made him get off and it then became a game of on and off.

3. Moved settee out a bit and then got a txt so stopped to see who it was from, went back to the settee and he was stuck behind it so had to rescue him and then rescue his split antler.

4. Continued to move settee, See 2 above. 
5. Settee and chairs are now in the middle of the room with a little gap between. New game race along settee, jump gap to chair turn and repeat. 
6. Moved sideboard, a piece of paper fell off he grabbed it and I had to chase him round the house to get it back before he ripped it up.

7. He can now get to the window - it has loads of nose marks on it now with a couple of licks for good measure. 
8. Had to rescue him from the blind.

9. Moved his cave bed into the passage ready to put it in the kitchen so he will be able to go in it whilst the work is being done. He has tried to drag it back into the front room, can’t get it through the door so is now lying on it in the doorway glaring at me. Finally got said he’d into kitchen and where he is totally ignoring it.

10. Spotted himself in tv screen and barked at reflection, then asked it to play.

11. Put his toy box (I know, I know) in the kitchen which It is now being checked over to make sure everything is there. 
Front room now ready for the work to be done, I’m having a cup of tea and a choccy biscuit, Jj is fast asleep on a chair in the kitchen. He’s had such a busy morning. 

 

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Sounds like our son’s 9 month old pup.  We are having her round here this afternoon so daughter in law can do some housework!

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The new broadband is now up and running. Installation didn’t take too long nearly 2 hours rather than the 3 stated. Bit of a blip when it was first switched on to boot up (look at me being technical) and it was taking ages. Engineer switched it off and back on again, still nothing. Made a phone call about it and then realised he hadn’t plugged it into the wall socket! 
Of course it had a new password so everything had to be reset, don’t know why they can’t let you have the same password to connect with your network. You don’t realise how many “gadgets” you have until you have to do something like this. Most went quite smoothly, but Alexa was awkward (as usual) and the Sky on demand instructions I had were out of date but have muddled through and am up and running again now. 
So am going to have a shower, have a pizza and then settle down on the settee and listen to one of my favourite podcasts whilst Jj is in his cave bed eating his lamb spaghett (he’s just had a good run on the field and a game of footie in the back garden) and I will be eating chocolate. 

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Unannounced Severn Trent installed a water meter today. We didn't ask for, nor do we want, one. When asked why they said it's to locate leaks on the system. Crap!

The contractors then admitted that's what they are told to tell customers, and there are plans for evrey home to have one.

Something is wrong when a major company, with a monopoly, is blatantly lying. Must be run by Tories...

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Brew, a couple of years ago, having read on here (I think) Carni and others discussing water meters, I suggested we should have one fitted.  My husband wasn’t at all keen and told me it would result in arguments about his water usage in the garden.  Nevertheless I made an appointment for a Severn Trent engineer to come round.  He looked at the location of our  stop tap, which is not in the house but strangely out on the pavement, and said he couldn’t fit a meter as the stop tap is too close to a street tree outside our gate.  He was going to report back to Head Office.   The result was an annual saving of around £300 and no arguments when the sprinkler goes on in the garden.   I wish I’d tried to get a water meter fitted when we first moved here in 2004, we’d be about £4,000 better off.  

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I don't doubt there is a possibility to save money, but what has got up my nose is the underhand way they've gone about it.

They asked, as have the other utilities, if we would agree to have a smart meter and for various reasons we said thanks, but no thanks.

Now they've fitted one under false pretences and brazenly lied to my face - that's the bit I'm narked about.

It's fitted in the pavement, not in the property, so we had no choice in the matter.

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Brew, did you not have a letter from Severn Trent.?

 

I had a letter last year saying they were doing work at the ends of the roads on the estate I live on in connection with a trial for leak detection.
They dug holes and I assume fitted a meter at the end of each road as there's a new chamber in the pavement.

 

Then at the beginning of this year another letter saying they were fitting meters on some houses on the road, they've fitted meters to mine and 2 others, on a road of about 30 houses.

The contractors said they're just given a few addresses in each area, they don't fit meters to every house.

 

Here's part of the letter,

 

EF0INaQ.png

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I can't believe that you are not on metered water. When we first came to Australia in the mid seventies we were not on metered water and it was not unusual for people to leave their lawn sprinklers on over night and to wake up to a very soggy lawn without any financial consequence of wasting water. When water meters came in in the eighties the bill was made up of two parts, a fixed charge for the supply of water and a sliding charge based on water use. The effect of this is that many unit dwellers often paid more for the fixed charge than the actual water useage. Don't be caught by this one.

The other day during a particularly hot spell I was watering my front lawn and plants when one of the local jobsworths came past and said "you should not be wasting water on lawns in this weather" I impolitely told him that the water was coming from two tanks in my back yard and not from the mains supply and that i would do what I like with it. The lawn and the plants seem to respond better to watering with rainwater.

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On 2/7/2022 at 11:30 AM, Brew said:

Isn't your birthday in March?

 

 

First I've heard..... :blink:

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1 hour ago, Stuart.C said:

Brew, did you not have a letter from Severn Trent.?

No, a card through the door at 8 this morning.

How does a meter on my supply work when leak detecting?, Even on the mains it's arguable, water leaks are pretty damn obvious without a meter, unless they are constantly monitored.

--------------

Oz, we have four charges:

!- standing charge for the meter

2- charge per cubic metre of water

3- charge for collecting the water that falls on the roof

4- charge for sewerage

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It's rather interestingJim.  My Public Profile does indeed show 2nd March, but when I go into 'edit Profile it clearly asks for Month, which is Feb, and Day, which is 3rd and therefore correct.  A system error I imagine.

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Underground water leaks are not always obvious, it depends on the ground conditions as to whether the leaking water comes up or goes down  and or around, unseen.

 

I used to do do commercial building mainteneance and got involved on several sites where it turns out there had been fairly major leaks for years and in one case costing the site owner around £20000 extra per year. That's how much the bill dropped after the leak was found. All commercial water supplies are metered, the exception being sometimes when a domestic property gets converted to commercial.

 

Local area Meters can show average use in that area which can be compared to other similar areas, like on my estate and highlight possible leaks.

 

Individual meters can be used to deduct usage of those properties and in conjunction with local area meters pinpoint high usage / possible leaks.

 

The meters fitted nowadays are in place of Severn Trent stop cocks in the street, so as a customer they have no obligation to notify you and you have no right of objection to it being fitted.

 

Using it to charge you is a different matter and in the future is likely to be compulsory for all properties.

 

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Had a leak under a patio once. Took a tip from a Severn Trent guy and got a steel rod, long enough so you I didn’t have to bend over too far, and stuck a bit of wood on one end (I used an old wooden doorknob). Put the end of the rod on the paving and ear on the bit of wood and you can actually hear the slight hissing. Where it’s loudest is where the leak is. Simples! (Sorry! I hate meerkats)

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AG, used to use the same principle to listen to a car engine, but instead of a steel rod, it would be a long screwdriver, pointy end on the cylinder block. (A bit painful if one tried it the other way round).

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Local area Meters can show average use in that area which can be compared to other similar areas, like on my estate and highlight possible leaks.

 

Not sold on the idea, if the leak is big enough to be deduced from a meter reading, you're probably arse deep in water  already.

Severn Trent on their website describe different ways they tackle leak detection and prevention, meters are not even mentioned. Flying drones to look for soggy ground is, so is looking for changes in the colour of grass.

Like the site supervisor said. “We're slowly getting meters in place before it becomes compulsory", why not just say so?

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I applied to have a water meter fitted on prompting from a relative. When the Severn Trent man came out to have a look he found I couldn't have one fitted as the water pipe from the mains serves 4 properties and there wasn’t enough pipe in the house near the stop tap to fit one.

I got a letter from Severn Trent about a week later saying as I was the only one living in the house and couldn’t have a water meter they were putting me on the “single occupancy tariff”. It has saved me around £200 a year (which no doubt the energy price rise will now eat up). The price is the estimate they provided if I had had a water meter fitted. 
 

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Bat out of Hell!!

 

Last Summer we were asleep in bed when I was awoken by a sucking/clicking sound on my pillow, about 2 inches from my ear. I ignored it at first thinking it was my imagination, can't be my wife trying to revive memories of yesteryear I thought? Then suddenly, it stopped and this was followed by a slight flapping sound coming in various directions across the bedroom. I sat up in the dark, noticing my wife had left the bedroom window open. I thought, oh no, a bird must has flown in. So, I shot up, switched the bedside light on, shook my wife and said "get up"! we have a bird in here ( Ok, don't say it, "you have two!). Looked down at my pillow and there in its original position was a small brown bat. Not expecting to share my pillow at 3am with multi-fanged thing, the sensible action would have been to throw a towel or something over it and gently place it outside the window. However, sense and sensibility had gone out of the window instead. My wife screamed, I managed a 'uh uh uh' sound, I pulled off my T-shirt (thats all I was wearing, well, it was summer!), my wife whipped off her nightie ( and that was definitely all she was wearing! ). Then we started to chase the Bat around the bedroom, armed with  our nightwear, trying to get it to fly out of the open window. After about 10mins, it finally made the great escape. Exhausted, we looked at each other and bust out laughing, the laughing suddenly stopped when turning around to close the window, we noticed our neighbours across the road were awake also, I guess wondering what all the commotion was about? They must have witnessed the whole thing! We dived into bed, (no time to retrieve our nightwear), switched off the light. As I was trying to drift off......................the sucking/clicking started again, near my ear..................this time no Bat.......just the opportunity to revive memories of yesteryear!

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21 hours ago, Brew said:

3- charge for collecting the water that falls on the roof

WTF. Are you joking? Charging you for the rain that falls on your roof???? How did that get adopted. Can you bill them if it does not rain?

I am amazed that our greedy governments have not thought of that yet. Still some areas in our states north actually got some rain this year, unfortunately too much all at once and the road and rail lines up to Darwin and over to Perth were shut due to flooding.

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