There appears to be some confusion about the amount of water consumed by a typical customer, and what is meant by wastage, leakage and unaccounted-for-water.
It might help to think of the water that is supplied to the house as being used in three (3) ways. It is either used directly by the customer, or it is knowingly (and visibly) wasted by the customer, or it is unwittingly wasted by the customer. The responsible customer will try to avoid knowingly wasting water (letting the tap flow etc), but may be totally unaware of the leakage that is happening in his or her property between the road and kitchen sink. It is only with the introduction of a meter at the property boundary will the customer be able to capture all water consumption and then do something about leaks as they emerge.
From the limited data available in Ireland it is becoming increasingly apparent that the customer-side leakage is a lot higher than anybody realised. This is not the customer’s fault as such, because many of these leaks are hidden underground. They may only exhibit as a soft area in the lawn, or a crack in the garage wall, or low pressure in the water at the kitchen sink. Crucially, only in the most extreme cases do they cut the entire supply to the house.
The likelihood is that a nationwide metering programme will help network managers and customers to identify leaks more quickly and save us all the huge expense of producing water that is never used. We can’t say that all of the leakage is on the customer’s side or on the local authority’s side of the stop-tap, but we can say that both the local authority and the customer have a burden of responsibility to chase and fix leaks.
I have written extensively on this subject in the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Business Post, and on my blog at blog.kevinjmurray.com. These comments come from my experience of several years as a Chartered Engineer engaged in the non-domestic metering programme in Ireland.
Kevin Murray
Yvonne: