Irish Water are gradually installing water meters for about 1 million properties. There have been protests in some areas but generally the installations seem to be going to plan It will be 2017 before all the planned installations are complete – and there are likely to be about 300,000 properties (mainly apartments) that are never going to get water meters.
Irish Water have also confirmed that for any house where the stopcock is located on your property then you will not receive a meter during the first phase of meter installation.
The water meters that are being installed are classed as AMR meters – which stands for Automatic Meter Reading. They have a normal analog clock type meter which has numbers that are visible and can be read manually as with gas or electric meters . But – the new Irish Water meters also have the ability to store meter readings and transmit that information to mobile drive by meter readers on request.
So – when water charging begins on October 1st January 1st 2015 we won’t see hundreds of Irish Water vans driving around taking thousands of meter readings.
The reading, as at midnight on Dec 31st 2014, will be stored on the electronic comopnent of all the meters – and will be available for “on request” transmission to the mobile meter readers for several months afterwards .
Likewise – the meter reading at the end of each month will be stored in the same way and can be picked up by a drive-by reader at any time in the following weeks/months. The first metered bills will be based on the water used between Jan 1st and March 31st 2015 – these bills are expected to go out in April and May 2015.
These AMR meters also have an inbuilt alarm system which will activate silently if water runs continuously through the meter over a 24-hour period (a possible leak)
This means that when the Irish Water do a drive by reading , the alarm will hopefully be detected and Irish Water should alert the householder about a potential leak.
Irish Water Phone Number 00353 (0)1 707 2828 or 1890 278 278
Read more here about Metered Water Bills – How Much to Expect?
Hi, I don’t understand how the reading was 00033375 I would not have used water after midnight on the 30th September 2014 can you explain please?
regards Catherine O’Connell
The meter has been running since it was installed. The reading as at midnight 30th sept will have been stored and another reading for 31st December will be stored . Both those readings will be used to work out the first bill . Keep a note of your 33375 reading to check bill when it comes.