Sunday, November 28, 2021

in which we go looking for the water meter


Today, we needed to go and read the water meter.  Because of complicated calculations about how best to run a water line to our house back in 1961, it's actually located in the next road - somewhere.  So we went hunting, armed with several tools, including a medium sized pick-axe, looked for it.  We lifted up various possible metal covers - including the large one on the right of the picture, which contained a lot of very amateur looking wires; I found another which seemed full of water; and an electricity meter on a nearby wall - and something that said "gas" which I wouldn't touch - but no water meter.  Eventually I spotted someone who lives in a flat in the house behind, and chased her down, and she thought - Eureka! - that it was under that pile of leaves behind my father's right hand.  So the iron lid was prised up, and I took a photo of the meter numbers, and the job was - fairly efficiently! - done.

My father's had that coat since 1957, by the way.

[oh - and why did we need to make a reading?  Last year, my father had a long-lasting undetected leak - undetected until a neighbor realised his back yard was turning swampy - from a frost-damaged outside tap.  So there was a big water bill.  This year, the water company did an "estimated" reading for the same period - which only asked for payment for 2,250 or so cubic meters of water, as opposed to the 58 cubic meters that he'd actually - we found - used.  They must have assumed that he'd used that pick-axe to dig a substantial swimming pool]

 

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