What ho one and all,

The headline on the front of today's Telegraph is what can only be described as 'surge pricing' for water during droughts. The aim is to encourage us to use less water.

This really anger me as we have a 6k liter rainwater collection tank and apart fro the fact that I'm not paying for incoming and by default, sewerage charges for using that water, I am unlikely to get any consideration for the fact that I am using less treated water than most houses.

With all the building regs we have in place, surely it makes sense that every new build, whether single houses or estates, must have a large rainwater collection to be used for toilet flushing. After all, every new build has to have a large soak-away, so why not collect that water before it goes to the soak-away?

It is absolute madness to flush expensively treated, potable water down the lavatory.

Now I'm off my soapbox!!

A surprising number of properties don't have water meters, and very few of the ones that do are 'smart meters' that could differentiate pricing water during one time from another.

The UK really does need to get everyone onto smart water meters, but given all the hissy fits about fitting smart energy meters, expect that to take a long time!

Drought pricing is the same as ToU electricity pricing (Economy 7 or whatever)

The utility company needs to know how much I used during the scarcity period, and how much I used in the rest of the period, so it can bill me at different rates. This needs to be measured in a tamper- and fraud-resistant way that is difficult for me to dispute later. A standard meter can't tell them that, it doesn't differentiate which day I used each litre.

They could guess that my drought consumption pattern was the same as everyone else's, but that's an easy system for me to game, unless they physically come round and read everyone's meter on the declared first and last day of each drought.



An easier system would be where the first 100 litres per person per day is at cheap rate and anything over that is at higher rate. That's enough for a shower and flushing the loo, but if someone is watering their plants then they will pay more.

The difficulty is for the water company to establish how many people live at each address - eg I have a son at university during term time, can I claim his cheap water allowance whilst he is away and water the veg plot?



Looking at the figures, it does seem that UK average water consumption 140 litres/day is heavily skewed by a minority of households who use drinkable water to water gardens or wash cars. One approach would be to give discounted water bills to people living in flats. People in houses with gardens and car parking could perhaps claim the same discount if they remove all outside taps that are fed from mains water? Or if they agree to fit a water meter.

That's a politically difficult demographic to upset though, lots of Telegraph readers have nice gardens and shiny cars!

Last year, to my surprise, we were contacted by Severn Trent to say that we had a leak. They had picked it up from the meter (that they read remotely by driving past it slowly - it's in the field in front of our house)
It was only a small leak on an above-ground part of a supply to an outbuilding, cold weather had affected a joint.
I was impressed that they had picked up on it. In my opinion, the system works!

Its not in the interest of water companies for us to use less water. There was a guy who invented a water saver device for toilets (interflush)and showed it on dragons den they said it had no business model.