Water Meter location

A question about : Water Meter location

Good morning,

I have just had a letter come through the door stating Southern Water would like to install a water meter at my property. I do not have a problem with this and have known for a few months that it would be happening.

My question, if anyone can help, is this. As I live on a private estate there are no footpaths outside my property. Southern Water have visited and stated on the letter that the water meter will have to be installed in my garden and have marked the site, asking me to sign and agree to this location on the letter.

Can I ask Southern Water for a 'nominal fee' to position the water meter in my garden ? I just wondered if any other member had been successful in gaining some sort of payment for a meter in their property boundaries ?

Thanks in advance,
Mark

Best answers:

• I doubt it. They don't pay you for pipes crossing your garden to supply you with water, you pay them! I imagine it's the same for meters
• If you have a mains stopcock inside your house and no other water outlet before this stopcock a remotely read meter can be fitted just after the mains stopcock that can be read from the street outside your front door....ask for this.
• As said there are remote reading meters available. My Mum had one which saved digging up the garden. The transmitter was located under her kitchen sink next to the stopcock and the display unit was mounted on an outside wall.
  Tell them that's what you want, not a manhole in your flower bed.
  In this day and age there should be better solutions than digging holes and then send a bloke round to squint down it once or twice a year
• Some isolation valves in the street or just outside your property turn off the supply to more than one property,so a meter cannot be fitted on them..