Tradies next door using my water meter

SaberX · Apr 18, 2016 1:12 pm

Hi all,

I'm sur ethis has happened in the past - noticed the tradies next door had connected to my water meter. NEver occured to me but after some deduction i realised their water meter is on the left side of their block, and they've connected to mine on the right side, next to their sign.

I've rang their builder to let them know - but has anyone ever pursed recourse? Looking at my water meter I'm at 8, nearly 9 on the meter (which from what i've read online means 9000 kilolitres).

My builder reckons they have discounted water during building, although I can't find this online only retail rates, which are about $2.60 something from memory per kl. Frankly it's not life shattering but I don't fancy paying $20 in water usage charges for someone else's bricks to go up - i'm sur eothers understand. Particualrly when they have their own water meter sitting there.

I suspect it is the tradie who i've seen working on the saturday/weekend, probably too lazy or slow to check the proper water meter and pluggin ginto mine as being closest to the building.

Still, their next door neighbour's lot is empty, so with a water meter on that side surely you could figure out that was YOUR water meter. Not to mention builder signs usually border the boundary, so if your plugging your hose in behind the sign clearly you're crossing over to the other lot?

Anyhow - how did you all deal with it? I do recall reading something about this in another thread (i think someone in the Calleya estate) but can't remember the remedy? DId you just cop the water charges and checked back to ensure their site supervisor is actually pulling the whip on their tradies to ensure they aren't continuing to use your water?

When exactly does your water meter get hard wired into your piping to avoid anyone 'tapping into it'? Only once bricks etc are up and roof frame/water plumbing is in??

I physically took their hose out and walked it to the other side of their block and plonked it on the water meter - so if that isn't a good enough hint I don't know what is. Bugs me that i'd have to do it anyway, not to mention the slush of concrete i inadvertenly waded through and had to wash off my basketball shoes after.... :twisted:

hopefully the last of my neighbourly issues... haha

Frye · Apr 18, 2016 1:22 pm

We used my neighbours water as it took a little while for ours to be connected even though the metre was there (might be the same in your case?), my other neighbour used our electricity.
I took the what goes around comes around philosophy and didn't worry too much about who used what when it's such a minimal amount of money. It simply wasn't worth the bother to me.
Others choose to pursue it and there are water metre lock things you can buy from hardware stores to stop it.

SaberX · Apr 18, 2016 1:55 pm

Interesting on how it would fit on to the water meter to stop it.

Understand what your saying but in this case the underlying difference is they have a water meter on the left side of their block , clearly ready for use and are simply just crossing the boundary to use mine on the right side? GIven their still doing their bricks and i'm not entirely sure of water charges in construction, my estimate base don normal retail pricing is $20 to date, i have no idea if this would jump even higher before they even finish and so I didn't want to end out $40,50 out of pocket for someone using my water whilst theirs is sitting around unused, if you know what I mean?

oneJohn · Apr 18, 2016 2:00 pm

8kL is quite a lot of water for a trade to get through. Are you sure it isn't just 8 Litres? Typically water meters read right down to the last litre, but might be a different colour for the decimals of kL. So for nearly 9kL, you'd have a meter reading something like 00008.765

You could attach a sign to the meter to say which property / building company it's for, but for most water usage it's a trivial amount of money.

kyliebsmith · Apr 18, 2016 2:01 pm

Yeah we used next doors electricity and our neighbour on the other side used ours. Apparently it's very normal to "share" around. There's really not much you can do.

clueless2009 · Apr 18, 2016 2:57 pm

Same for me, our back neighbor's builder henley used our electricity and sheltered in my alfresco when raining. I was at work my mum was living at the time she was telling me what they doing. I didnt feel much of the electricity bill jumping up. But didnt raised it with their ss anyway i just want to put the fence in asap.

SaberX · Apr 18, 2016 3:12 pm

I've got a picture but the meter has black and red numbers. Mine was black: 8, red: 73.

From the water corp website my understanding was black represents number of kilolitres used and 73 the proportion of a whole kilolitre used.

so my understanding was that represented 8.73 kL used?

bpratt · Apr 19, 2016 11:00 am

Plug or cap the output side of your meter, and that'll make it too inconvenient for them to use.

Tradies will often find the easiest route for every little thing... if your meter is capped, and the meter on their block is not capped, then guess which one they will use first.

Sadly you can not prove they used all of that water... could easily have been kids mucking around turning your one on and running away.

Matt1 · Apr 19, 2016 1:40 pm

The reality is it's not worth doing anything more than you have already done to save maybe $20.

I discovered once my neighbours house was complete that they didn't have power for the whole build. I caught a tradie plugged into my meter box once. They must have used my power for practically their whole build! Didn't even notice a blip on the build so never bother to do anything about it.

SaberX · Apr 19, 2016 7:23 pm

Water bill came and i can confirm it did indeed have 7 kilolitres on it. So somewhere between the reading on friday (15th) and when i discovered the hose on saturday evening , they would have used nearly 2 kL of water.

It isn't mind blowing the cost per litre ( 1.50+ a kL) but my worry is if this goes on throughout the whole build. Call me cheap but i guess i wasn't in the mood to pay $20,30 when they have a water meter on their side of the block.

By plugging or capping your output meter, how do you propose that bpratt? You'd have to block access for yours plus allow access to when the tradies for my own site eventually arrive?

bpratt · Apr 23, 2016 10:25 pm

SaberX

By plugging or capping your output meter, how do you propose that bpratt? You'd have to block access for yours plus allow access to when the tradies for my own site eventually arrive?

A screw cap or screw in plug on the output side of your meter.

From the time you do this, till the time your own place starts being build, it should have educated the tradies on the other house that they already have their own water supply.

When you start to build, just remove the cap/plug.

I won't totally prevent them from using your metered water, but because the meter on that other block isn't blocked or capped, they will start using that one.

Go down to Reece or other supplier, and explain your situation and that you want to stop them by capping your meter.