Water meter over reading?

[mangocrazy]

On the subject of stop cocks, I've been advised by more than one plumber never to turn the tap fully on as that is where they jam, if they're going to. Turn the stopcock fully on, then turn it back a quarter of a turn so the tap is free to move in either direction. This greatly lessens the chance of the tap seizing in position.

And if you're ever going to fit stop valves to isolate certain parts of the system, always use full bore ball valves with a handle. Never use gate valves, they are officially shit.

[MrLongbeard]

the value was seized stuck

Most folk don't touch them for years so they seize up, I've got into the habit of turning ours off and on again once a year when I turn off the outside tap for the winter, just to keep it free.

[Horse]

(Due to oddities of Edwardian builders, the stopcock actually controlled the water for about 4 houses, so the water company couldn't just turn us off anyway).

I had a Victorian terraced house, #2 in a row of 6.

Mains water went along the row, under the kitchens Any grief, it's digging up the floors

[Mr. Dazzle]

the value was seized stuck

Most folk don't touch them for years so they seize up, I've got into the habit of turning ours off and on again once a year when I turn off the outside tap for the winter, just to keep it free.

Are you the guy who fitted my bathroom?

[mangocrazy]

(Due to oddities of Edwardian builders, the stopcock actually controlled the water for about 4 houses, so the water company couldn't just turn us off anyway).

I had a Victorian terraced house, #2 in a row of 6.

Mains water went along the row, under the kitchens Any grief, it's digging up the floors

Should have bought a house with a cellar... I can access nearly all of the length of my cold water supply - it enters through the wall in the cellar, snakes its way through the cellar, up the stairs, feeds the bathroom then drops down to the kitchen. The only part that isn't accessible is the part that's buried in the kitchen wall, and I put that in from a single piece of copper pipe wrapped in tape to protect it from the gypsum plaster...

[MrLongbeard]

the value was seized stuck

Most folk don't touch them for years so they seize up, I've got into the habit of turning ours off and on again once a year when I turn off the outside tap for the winter, just to keep it free.

Are you the guy who fitted my bathroom?

Got any leaks? if you do it's not outside the realms of possibility if we include clones and the multiverse theory

[Cousin Jack]

(Due to oddities of Edwardian builders, the stopcock actually controlled the water for about 4 houses, so the water company couldn't just turn us off anyway).

I had a Victorian terraced house, #2 in a row of 6.

Mains water went along the row, under the kitchens Any grief, it's digging up the floors

Should have bought a house with a cellar... I can access nearly all of the length of my cold water supply - it enters through the wall in the cellar, snakes its way through the cellar, up the stairs, feeds the bathroom then drops down to the kitchen. The only part that isn't accessible is the part that's buried in the kitchen wall, and I put that in from a single piece of copper pipe wrapped in tape to protect it from the gypsum plaster...

Should have put an accessible isolation valve at each end, you can never be too careful.

[mangocrazy]

Should have bought a house with a cellar... I can access nearly all of the length of my cold water supply - it enters through the wall in the cellar, snakes its way through the cellar, up the stairs, feeds the bathroom then drops down to the kitchen. The only part that isn't accessible is the part that's buried in the kitchen wall, and I put that in from a single piece of copper pipe wrapped in tape to protect it from the gypsum plaster...

Should have put an accessible isolation valve at each end, you can never be too careful.

There are isolation valves all over the place in that part of the kitchen, along with multiple pipes embedded in the plaster. I counted seven in an area of less than a square metre... This was the planning phase of embedding Flow/return/cold/hot/gas pipes in the wall on which a condensing boiler was to be mounted. The existing hot and cold supply pipes to the sink are lurking to the right of the picture:

DSC_3546.JPG (1.09 MiB) Viewed 802 times

A nice eselction of isolation ball valves:

DSC_3553.JPG (1.4 MiB) Viewed 802 times

And part way through installation:

DSC_3571.JPG (1.58 MiB) Viewed 802 times

[Mr. Dazzle]

So.....

Closure, 'cause I know you've all been on tenterhook. Short story - my water softener doesn't read correctly

We went away on holiday at Christmas, thus we knew we wouldn't be using anything. I didn't turn anything off, 'cause I knew we were going away again a week later. Plan was to get a baseline, then turn off the main stop cock and repeat.

On the first trip away both water meter and softener agreed we used nothing at all. Therefore I don't think we've got a leak anywhere.

So next question was "why do they disagree?". The regen thing certainly covers some of it, but not all. Fortunately both the softener and the meter give hour-by-hour readings. My initial plan was to use a known amount of water somehow and then compare. Then I realised I already do that, in a round about sort of way.

I typically run my dishwasher and washing machine in the middle of the night (Octopus flexible leccy tariff innit). I took some googling, but I found out how much water they each use for various cycles. Thus I could look on the hourly history, see when the washing machine ran at 3AM or whatever in the past (i.e. when nothing else is running) and then compare the two.

So yeah, as above, the water softener under reads. I know a full wash takes ~80 litres for example (which is way more than I expected BTW) and I can clearly see an 80 litre spike on the meter at 3AM. At the same time the softener thinks I only used 65 litres.....

This does mean my softener is probably under softening, 'cause it thinks it's processing less water than it actually is.