Water charges for excessive usage

charlie14

Brendan Bendar wrote: »

“Lies” there's that auld hoary well used terminology from the PBP manual.

Where did stuff spring from, Cha.

Cummon now Brendan, the old brain cells aren`t dying off at that rapid a rate that you do not remember Enda Kenny`s no water charges until we had a world class service surely.


Commiserations if they are.

Brendan Bendar

charlie14 wrote: »

Cummon now Brendan, the old brain cells aren`t dying off at that rapid a rate that you do not remember Enda Kenny`s no water charges until we had a world class service surely.


Commiserations if they are.

Know a few of these good people..... seem to be very left wing and union dominated, hardly representative of centre politic in Ireland.

No harm in that but ........hey

charlie14

Representative of the citizen that vote for them which is the basis of democracy.

You would not be attempting to throw in a bit of distraction there Brendan where after asking about the lies given on water charges were provided for both Labour and Fine Gael ?

Brendan Bendar

charlie14 wrote: »

Representative of the citizen that vote for them which is the basis of democracy.

You would not be attempting to throw in a bit of distraction there Brendan where after asking about the lies given on water charges were provided for both Labour and Fine Gael ?

I have a severe distrust in people who use the expression ‘lies’ in a political sense.

Seems strange that very few centre politic or business folk were involved in the water protest ‘leadership’.

Don’t see any in that pic that I can recognise anyway.

Seem to be, how would you say it, cut from the same tree.

Plumbthedepths

Brendan Bendar wrote: »

Know a few of these good people..... seem to be very left wing and union dominated, hardly representative of centre politic in Ireland.

No harm in that but ........hey

Mad question but did they put themselves in front of the electorate? Did they receive a democratic mandate if the answer is yes then what's the problem?

Brendan Bendar

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

Mad question but did they put themselves in front of the electorate? Did they receive a democratic mandate if the answer is yes then what's the problem?

I can’t remember Mr Gibney being elected to Dáil Éireann, maybe Cha is right, the auld brain cells are going.

What constituency was he in as a matter of interest.

charlie14

Brendan Bendar wrote: »

I have a severe distrust in people who use the expression ‘lies’ in a political sense.

Seems strange that very few centre politic or business folk were involved in the water protest ‘leadership’.

Don’t see any in that pic that I can recognise anyway.

Seem to be, how would you say it, cut from the same tree.

Well you don`t have to take my word that both Labour and Fine Gael lied when it came the set up of water charges. It`s in print from both for all to see.


Like many pro supporters you keep carping back to this, it was only those from the left that opposed while ignoring the vast numbers of Fine Gael core voters that were on the marches that scared the hell out of Fine Gael.

Plumbthedepths

Brendan Bendar wrote: »

I can’t remember Mr Gibney being elected to Dáil Éireann, maybe Cha is right, the auld brain cells are going.

What constituency was he in as a matter of interest.

My apologies but most of the individuals whose photo you uploaded were/are elected public representatives.
You are being disingenuous in your behaviour but no surprise considering your manner of engagement heretofore.

charlie14

Brendan Bendar wrote: »

I can’t remember Mr Gibney being elected to Dáil Éireann, maybe Cha is right, the auld brain cells are going.

What constituency was he in as a matter of interest.

Come on now Brendan. Bit pedantic to expect people to start playing "Spot the odd one out" is it not

Brendan Bendar

Is that the bould Willie over on the right?

Benedict

The following is currently showing on the Citizens' Information site (IW section):

"If excess usage is detected unmetered customers will be charged at the cap (currently set at €500 per year for both water and wastewater services) – unless a meter is installed."

So if you have no meter (through no fault of your own because they stopped installing them before you got one), and excess usage is "detected" (though nobody knows how this can be done), then even if the excess usage is one single litre per annum, you'll be hit for E500.

That's "unless a meter is installed" - which can't happen because meters are no longer being installed.

Wow!

Brendan Bendar

Getting stranger every day, B.

Benedict

Brendan Bendar wrote: »

Getting stranger every day, B.

Yes, it's all quite intriguing really and shrouded in mystery.



I'm sure the people who write these things don't mean any harm - but I wonder do they think them through before they publish them?

NovemberWren

Benedict wrote: »

The following is currently showing on the Citizens' Information site (IW section):

"If excess usage is detected unmetered customers will be charged at the cap (currently set at €500 per year for both water and wastewater services) – unless a meter is installed."

So if you have no meter (through no fault of your own because they stopped installing them before you got one), and excess usage is "detected" (though nobody knows how this can be done), then even if the excess usage is one single litre per annum, you'll be hit for E500.

That's "unless a meter is installed" - which can't happen because meters are no longer being installed.

Wow!

it's not too difficult to ascertain:-
Along the water lines (in conjunction with the water meters; and/or probably not water meters in some or even many areas); Irish Water put in:-
' Leak Sensor/s + ', by itron .
Some of the brand blurb:- "It's estimated that up to 30 percent of water pumped through distribution systems is lost to leaks.......... .... the Leak Sensor+ is an advanced approach to distribution system leak detection..... ".
Ir.Water do just not need just the water meters; they rely on what they have put in along the (your?) water line: Sensors.

charlie14

NovemberWren wrote: »

it's not too difficult to ascertain:-
Along the water lines (in conjunction with the water meters; and/or probably not water meters in some or even many areas); Irish Water put in:-
' Leak Sensor/s + ', by itron .
Some of the brand blurb:- "It's estimated that up to 30 percent of water pumped through distribution systems is lost to leaks.......... .... the Leak Sensor+ is an advanced approach to distribution system leak detection..... ".
Ir.Water do just not need just the water meters; they rely on what they have put in along the (your?) water line: Sensors.

It is actually nigh impossible to ascertain.


What you are proposing Irish Water already have, but we call them district meters.
The highlighted above should have given you a clue to that.
As to the "(your?) water line", it isn`t.
It`s a leakage detection system for mains same as district metering which Irish Water and the LA`s before them used.

Benedict

NovemberWren wrote: »

it's not too difficult to ascertain:-
Along the water lines (in conjunction with the water meters; and/or probably not water meters in some or even many areas); Irish Water put in:-
' Leak Sensor/s + ', by itron .
Some of the brand blurb:- "It's estimated that up to 30 percent of water pumped through distribution systems is lost to leaks.......... .... the Leak Sensor+ is an advanced approach to distribution system leak detection..... ".
Ir.Water do just not need just the water meters; they rely on what they have put in along the (your?) water line: Sensors.

IW cannot establish number of litres used in a specific home in the absence of a meter for that home.



If you know how they can do it, we'd all love to hear.

Benedict

Most water-users would surely want to fully support IW in any efforts they might make to put an efficient system in place. But supporting a plan which cannot work will not help anyone. The plan to impose a quota and penalty regime on around half the users will never get public support and everyone knows that those without meters will be free from any quotas or penalties.

Continuing to pretend that metered and non-metered homes will be treated the same is just plain silly and the sooner a new plan is drawn up the better for all concerned.

Most people will pay up no problem if the system is fair. So as Boris J would say, "Let's get on with it".

NovemberWren

charlie14 wrote: »

It is actually nigh impossible to ascertain.


What you are proposing Irish Water already have, but we call them district meters.
The highlighted above should have given you a clue to that.
As to the "(your?) water line", it isn`t.
It`s a leakage detection system for mains same as district metering which Irish Water and the LA`s before them used.

@charlie14. you say something about district meters (for mains prob.), but these wireless water meters are themselves sensor nodes.
"a wireless water meter network is a kind of Wireless Sensor Network, which is defined as: a large network of resource-constrained sensor nodes with multiple preset function, such as sensing and processing... the major elements of a Wireless Sensor Network are the Sensor Nodes and the base (utility?) station"
"Each individual Water Meter is a Sensor Node".
And Irish Water know this - (as the part about Leak Sensors I got from IW itself, though at that time they did not state that the actual water meters are themselves Sensor Nodes. IW just give you dribbles of info.).
Also, in regard to Data Collection,.... .... signals from the single meter are transmitted and then collected in a central receiving station, (the utility company?), if close enough, or to Repeaters and then to the central receiving station.
In most cases a star topology (whatever that is) is used, but in some implementations a mesh topology is used - "so Each Meter can act as a Repeater for any others within range".

If Three or Vodafone or Meteor have masts, (rented from ESB??), might this be Repeated (via your neighbours' meters?) and then even be accessed by Private Security Companies (who themselves consistently monitor drains of the Private businesses that they are employed by).

charlie14

NovemberWren wrote: »

@charlie14. you say something about district meters (for mains prob.), but these wireless water meters are themselves sensor nodes.
"a wireless water meter network is a kind of Wireless Sensor Network, which is defined as: a large network of resource-constrained sensor nodes with multiple preset function, such as sensing and processing... the major elements of a Wireless Sensor Network are the Sensor Nodes and the base (utility?) station"
"Each individual Water Meter is a Sensor Node".
And Irish Water know this - (as the part about Leak Sensors I got from IW itself, though at that time they did not state that the actual water meters are themselves Sensor Nodes. IW just give you dribbles of info.).
Also, in regard to Data Collection,.... .... signals from the single meter are transmitted and then collected in a central receiving station, (the utility company?), if close enough, or to Repeaters and then to the central receiving station.
In most cases a star topology (whatever that is) is used, but in some implementations a mesh topology is used - "so Each Meter can act as a Repeater for any others within range".

If Three or Vodafone or Meteor have masts, (rented from ESB??), might this be Repeated (via your neighbours' meters?) and then even be accessed by Private Security Companies (who themselves consistently monitor drains of the Private businesses that they are employed by).

The 500M. in meters we already have buried simply measure the water to individual households and can be read remotely.
That is all the do, or are designed to do.
I do not know what this company are promoting theirs as possible for, but are you suggesting that not only should we spend an unknown fortune on the remaining households just to catch a small number over using their allocation, but we should spend another unknown fortune digging up and replacing those that are already there to comply with this fabled new network ?
To each their own, but madness on too many levels for me I`m afraid.

NovemberWren

charlie14 wrote: »

The 500M. in meters we already have buried simply measure the water to individual households and can be read remotely.
That is all the do, or are designed to do.
I do not know what this company are promoting theirs as possible for, but are you suggesting that not only should we spend an unknown fortune on the remaining households just to catch a small number over using their allocation, but we should spend another unknown fortune digging up and replacing those that are already there to comply with this fabled new network ?
To each their own, but madness on too many levels for me I`m afraid.

madness. that is precisely correct.
I would wreck every water meter that they have put in.
Most people just reckon that these only read what amount of water is used.
But, (and in the U.S.), these smart meters are Hacked, ... for many reasons, i.e. "reduce your water bill, increase other's water bills, Steal water (theft of service), evade water restrictions, surveillance of human activity in the home, route to introduce malware into water SCADA system(?), get into other 'smartgrid' networks like electric grid(?)."

All that was said by the Head Engineer in a Water Dept. in California, and btw he put most emphasis on 'surveillance of human activity in the home'.

And here, the private security companies access all the information they possible can. And not a word from this Govt. (or FF, Lab.); because they are the main employers of the private surveillance in their own businesses.

madness. and intimidation.

charlie14

NovemberWren wrote: »

madness. that is precisely correct.
I would wreck every water meter that they have put in.
Most people just reckon that these only read what amount of water is used.
But, (and in the U.S.), these smart meters are Hacked, ... for many reasons, i.e. "reduce your water bill, increase other's water bills, Steal water (theft of service), evade water restrictions, surveillance of human activity in the home, route to introduce malware into water SCADA system(?), get into other 'smartgrid' networks like electric grid(?)."

All that was said by the Head Engineer in a Water Dept. in California, and btw he put most emphasis on 'surveillance of human activity in the home'.

And here, the private security companies access all the information they possible can. And not a word from this Govt. (or FF, Lab.); because they are the main employers of the private surveillance in their own businesses.

madness. and intimidation.

I do not really know much about all that, but I think it is pretty obvious this Public Service Card is not as innocent as we were being lead to believe.


Makes you wonder what this government is really up too with it when they are prepared to fight (and using taxpayers money to do it ) their own Data Protection Commissioner in court to keep it and expand it into areas that are far removed from those we were originally told.

McMurphy

is_that_so wrote: »

IW have been given approval by the Commission for Regulation of Utilities to start charging people for using excessive amounts of water, above the 213,000L annual limit set by legislation. By the looks of it people will have plenty of time to conform and then there'll be a charge of €1.85 for each 1,000 litres above that limit. A sensible move in my view as there are an estimated 80,000 households going over the limit.

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2019/0717/1063532-irish-water/

Just on this op, I see in this morning's Indo that this plan has been postponed......... Again......

They're hanging on until 2021 now apparently, which is handy, considering there's an election that's imminent, the plan as listed in the op is unworkable, and a new govt is likely to scrap it altogether.

Harry Palmr

Why has the metering programme not been completed? If they are having trouble with the estimates surely it makes sense? Given most people on the mains have them I don't see any scope for plausible protest campaigns at this stage.

charlie14

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Why has the metering programme not been completed? If they are having trouble with the estimates surely it makes sense? Given most people on the mains have them I don't see any scope for plausible protest campaigns at this stage.

Most on the mains don`t have meters.
50% of domestic households do not have them, nor do practically all apartments.

It cost 1 billion euro to install meters for 50% of households so it would conservatively cost another 2 billion euro to meter the rest even if they intended metering apartments.Which btw they never did.
That would mean an overall cost of at least 3 billion euro just to detect a small number who are actually exceeding their allowance.
Regardless of all the many other reasons not to do so, the financial return would not come within a country mile of justifying the outlay.

McMurphy

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Why has the metering programme not been completed? If they are having trouble with the estimates surely it makes sense? Given most people on the mains have them I don't see any scope for plausible protest campaigns at this stage.

Open to correction, but I think it's almost 50/50 for meter installations for those eligible to have them fitted (on the mains) but obviously there's a fairly large contingent beyond that who were never due to have meters fitted (apartments and dwellings not accessable etc).

It will be a fairly brave political party that would dare grasp the Irish water metering nettle again, and what with the siteserv inquiry still to be concluded, there's likely no money to be made now for friends of the govt either.

It was an ill thought out brain fart from the beginning, everything they could have done arseways they did.

Over a billion euro pissed away on FGs own wet dream when the country was on its knees.

Harry Palmr

That's fair enough, listening to media you'd think most suburban easy to access homes were all hooked up, clearly not. I'm not either btw and I fit the above description.

charlie14

Harry Palmr wrote: »

That's fair enough, listening to media you'd think most suburban easy to access homes were all hooked up, clearly not. I'm not either btw and I fit the above description.

Irish Water had an open ended cheque-book of taxpayers money with a well funded PR department.
A honey pot for certain journalists who had no problem publishing whatever was needed without checking the facts.
They are still around hoping the good times for them will return.

Brendan Bendar

charlie14 wrote: »

Most on the mains don`t have meters.
50% of domestic households do not have them, nor do practically all apartments.

It cost 1 billion euro to install meters for 50% of households so it would conservatively cost another 2 billion euro to meter the rest even if they intended metering apartments.Which btw they never did.
That would mean an overall cost of at least 3 billion euro just to detect a small number who are actually exceeding their allowance.
Regardless of all the many other reasons not to do so, the financial return would not come within a country mile of justifying the outlay.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/cost-of-water-meters-100-million-more-than-estimated-1.2012148

Where did you get those figures of a billion and three billion from please.

charlie14

Brendan Bendar wrote: »

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/cost-of-water-meters-100-million-more-than-estimated-1.2012148

Where did you get those figures of a billion and three billion from please.

That article you linked is from 2014. I can direct you to another newspaper article that puts the cost to date with only 50% of households and no apartments metered at over 2.17 Billion.

You may have missed the last few lines in that link of yours on estimated costs.
It says that estimate includes meters, boundary boxes, ancillary works and management costs for smaller items like media and print materials.

No mention of the actual cost of installing, on going management costs, consultants at 70M (Fergus O`Dowd the junior minister in charge says that cost was actually 200M.), bonuses, laughing yoga classes, etc., call center costs,cost of meter reading, billing, 200M for a "conservation grant",wages and expenses for all the add on Irish Water bureaucracy etc.

That is without the cost to taxpayers of a generous write down on Siteserv to enble an old friend of FG to get an installation contract when he didn`t have a tax clearance certificate.
Add ali that up and 1 Billion is conservative.

No stretch to say that metering the other 50% of households would be any cheaper.Then there is all the apartments that they had no notion of metering due to costs. With the way Irish Water burn money, lucky if another Billion would cover it.
Madness and a waste of a fortune from the outset on a FG wet dream during the worst recession in our history

Brendan Bendar

charlie14 wrote: »

That article you linked is from 2014. I can direct you to another newspaper article that puts the cost to date with only 50% of households and no apartments metered at over 2.17 Billion.

You may have missed the last few lines in that link of yours on estimated costs.
It says that estimate includes meters, boundary boxes, ancillary works and management costs for smaller items like media and print materials.

No mention of the actual cost of installing, on going management costs, consultants at 70M (Fergus O`Dowd the junior minister in charge says that cost was actually 200M.), bonuses, laughing yoga classes, etc., call center costs,cost of meter reading, billing, 200M for a "conservation grant",wages and expenses for all the add on Irish Water bureaucracy etc.

That is without the cost to taxpayers of a generous write down on Siteserv to enble an old friend of FG to get an installation contract when he didn`t have a tax clearance certificate.
Add ali that up and 1 Billion is conservative.

No stretch to say that metering the other 50% of households would be any cheaper.Then there is all the apartments that they had no notion of metering due to costs. With the way Irish Water burn money, lucky if another Billion would cover it.
Madness and a waste of a fortune from the outset on a FG wet dream during the worst recession in our history

The second word in the first sentence mentions ‘installing’.

Have you a link substantiating the figures you put out there by any chance.