17 February (Part 1) - Thames Water Survey - What a waste of effort!
Everyone in Bexley has been affected by Thames Water works over the past year
or so. If you have not been held up by
their road works you would have been inconvenienced by
their meter fitting programme. Many residents found themselves
with
water tanks filled with mud and silt.
I got off relatively lightly. They said they couldn’t fit a meter outside and
there was not enough room by the internal stopcock, I was therefore put on a
fixed tariff. Quite pleasing because it was less than half of what it was before.
Unfortunately things didn’t stop there,
Thames Water wanted to come inside to check I had no leaks and knew how to economise on water. Actually I already did, I had
been to their Council presentations and I make some effort to use as little as possible to
minimise salt consumption in the water softener.
Being a single occupier I can choose to do the evening washing up in a bowl
along with the breakfast things in the morning. If I get up in the night I don’t
have to flush the toilet until morning if I don’t want to; there is no one around to complain.
I think I washed my car once in the past twelve months and only with a couple of bucketfuls of
water. Last year I didn’t have to water the garden at all.
Last week I let Thames Water do their survey. A lady found no leaks and fitted
some sort of aerating device to all the taps. That was it. Then she got out her
computer and asked a series of questions. Do I use a bath or a shower etc. and
do I brush my teeth under a running tap? “No.”
Having been brought up in an age when a bath was a weekly event in a zinc plated tub in
front of the fire, I do not take four a day as the lady said some people did and she could
see by the tide mark around the bath that I fill it only one finger deep.
How often do I use the washing machine? Twice a week at the very most. How often
to I boil a single cup of water in the kettle?
She pressed all the buttons on her tablet and announced that I used about 10%
more water per day than the average person. What? Don’t wash car, combine
washing up sessions, not watered the garden with a hose for a year or more and I
use more than average.
I told the lady her survey must be rubbish and she pressed a few more buttons
and now I used about 5% less than average, just like that! Proof if ever it was needed that the
survey definitely is rubbish.
And what about these aerator things, what do they do? How do they save water,
you are still going to fill the basin to the same level aren’t you?
Downstairs with decent water pressure they don’t make an awful lot of
difference. Upstairs they have reduced flow to a trickle. If they are going to
save water it is only because the basin or bath takes so long to fill that you
give up and go dirty.
I have removed them obviously, so the Thames Water lady has achieved absolutely nothing.
If you are being pestered by Thames Water for a survey and you think you are
already being as frugal as you can be, then just tell them to go away. The
survey is a waste of everyone’s time.