Excessive water bill - possible leak?

blackangelheart wrote:

....how would this be investigated?

Thanks,
Melanie

Call a plumber to investigate. If THAT much water was leaking somewhere, someone would likely notice, and it should be easy for an experienced person to find.

Could be a faulty meter or a neighbour siphoning water out of your roof tank.

1 - Turn off every tap in the house.
2 - Check to see if the meter is moving.

If it is, you have a leak.

If it isn't, check for faulty meter readers, faulty meters, and look at the meter readings  history for that property. That should be available from the supplier.

Firstly check by shutting off all taps / stop cocks after the meter then the meter should not register any flow.
If meter is recording then best bet is that its a shared meter, things to look for are, has the property got a garage, swimming pool or well then check to see how many flats to meters there are.

Don't expect a lot of help from ARMS, so be pro active and go  and investigate yourselves.

Terry

Thanks everyone for the helpful suggestions. We approached the landlord again and asked about a possible leak. First he tried to explain that we could've used that much if we used the washing machine often, showered a lot, etc. Still, it's too much we said to him and then he knocked off 9 cubic metres so now we only have to pay for 14. It's still a lot of money (over €70 for less than two weeks) but at least not over a hundred euros.

Sadly we couldn't check for a leak since it's one of those meters that only register if a full cubic metre was used. Our new and permanent place has a better one where even smaller flows of water are registered. The previous one did have a garage so maybe that's where it went.

Just for comparison, can anyone give their figures on consumption for water and electricity? So far for two people we are using around 0.5 cubic metre for water and 10 units (kWh) for electricity per day. We don't have a gas hob so electricity will be a bit more I guess plus I'm working from home. Would be helpful to know what other people are using

blackangelheart wrote:

Just for comparison, can anyone give their figures on consumption for water and electricity? So far for two people we are using around 0.5 cubic metre for water and 10 units (kWh) for electricity per day. )

I don't have figures for electric off the top of my head.  For water, with a family of 4 (me, wife, 6 and 3 yr old kids) use at most 6 cubic meters of water a month.  We have a dishwasher, washing machine that both run about once a day or 2, we all shower once a day, wash hands....normal good hygiene habits, but not excessive....our numbers were quite a bit higher until we got the dishwasher and washing machine which conserve a LOT of water for us.

blackangelheart wrote...

" Sadly we couldn't check for a leak since it's one of those meters that only register if a full cubic metre was used. Our new and permanent place has a better one where even smaller flows of water are registered. The previous one did have a garage so maybe that's where it went."



It looks like the supply has been run from another meter and someone has fitted a cheap non calibrated meter on the line.
You have probably been paying for his water as well as yours !
Good job it only for a couple of weeks.

Terry

Normal water consumption for two people is somewhere around 5-10 cubic meters a month. When we lived in Gozo we used about 6/month, now up to 12-14/month with a baby (washing machine on 2x a day, baths, etc).

So yea it looks like you were paying about triple !!!

Electric sounds about right and can vary a lot tbh. Ours is about 12 units/day at the moment. Would be more with ACs on. If you heat using ACs and work from home then around 15-20/day is normal. Basically around 450-600 units a month with ACs and 200-300/month without.

Edit: I also wanted to say thank you for this thread. We're sat here making a pros & cons list for our next move and this just ruled Malta out completely. It's been a couple of years now... the "Maltese way" of doing business is just lol - thanks for reminding me.

mantasmo wrote:

Normal water consumption for two people is somewhere around 5-10 cubic meters a month. When we lived in Gozo we used about 6/month, now up to 12-14/month with a baby (washing machine on 2x a day, baths, etc).

So yea it looks like you were paying about triple !!!

Electric sounds about right and can vary a lot tbh. Ours is about 12 units/day at the moment. Would be more with ACs on. If you heat using ACs and work from home then around 15-20/day is normal. Basically around 450-600 units a month with ACs and 200-300/month without.

Edit: I also wanted to say thank you for this thread. We're sat here making a pros & cons list for our next move and this just ruled Malta out completely. It's been a couple of years now... the "Maltese way" of doing business is just lol - thanks for reminding me.

Glad this thread helped but sadly it put you off. This wasn't my intention lol. I'm sure there are landlords and places that don't con you like that but judging by what's on the internet it seems to be rare. Or maybe we just don't hear about the good ones because not many people go online, open a thread and say "Hey, we have a nice landlord and pay the right amount of bills!"

So far we haven't used any heating and will desperately try to avoid it. Our penthouse is super bright and warms up nicely, on colder days and before I go to bed I make myself a hot water bottle. Thermal wear also helps In terms of heat though we will definitely use the aircon, so thanks for the heads up with the consumption!

It seems we're good with electricity but still use a lot of water which is strange. Definitely need to monitor this, I wonder if this could the reason the landlord only wants to read the meter every 3-4 months??  (it was every two months before he changed it during contract signing). Ah well, lesson learned for the next property when this lease is up!

Yea we looked at about a dozen properties in Gozo back in 2013 and I'd say that about 8 out of 12 landlords seemed proper dodgy. We always laugh it off and that's it really... mehh.

Some good ones out there for sure. Just be careful.

mantasmo wrote:

Yea we looked at about a dozen properties in Gozo back in 2013 and I'd say that about 8 out of 12 landlords seemed proper dodgy. We always laugh it off and that's it really... mehh.

Some good ones out there for sure. Just be careful.

Wow and that was Gozo!! I'm sure for Malta the number would be 10 out of 12

I loved watching all the landlords answer our simple question "Is it residential?". It's a simple yes or no but instead the answer was long-winded and they always seemed to conjure up some examples of couples our age or three lawyers living downstairs stating their exact consumption (too low btw). My memory isn't even that good to remember our energy consumption in Ireland from last year!

Bit late to this party.

Neighbour in ground floor apartment complained that her tiles were rising up off her floor, due to water coming in. Plus there was water coming through the roof of the under block garages.

We did have a water leak, for sure, in a block. This was less than 12 months ago in Marsascala. Fortunately our all Maltese block (except us)! were good.

We turned everything off and it was our Meter that kept running 😔

They (neighbours) arranged water company guy to come and inspect, he did, confirming it was our pipes that for some reason went under the neighbouring blocks floors.

Long story, short.

All of us agreed to reroute the water supply for all apartments (as neighbours correctly reasoned that if this happened to us it was only time before they had same problem).

We found a plumber who rerouted all our supplies in less than a day for €100 each apartment (4).

The upshot, was a quick fix. Just confirmed what we already knew, original build quality is poor. But, it all got sorted quickly, amicably and cheaply.

Oh, we also has a bill with extra €250+ for the leaked water!

Just my little story of island life 🙄

If your landlord reduced the charge, based on the general reputation of Maltese landlords (other Maltese landlords are available), there is a scam of one sort or another in operation.

It is really hard to answer a water question without really seeing what a person is using. To me, your water use sounds like a lot. But we had a friend stay with us for a month, and he said "I don't use much water," and our water usage doubled that month.

That said, €125/week is a LOT.

Has the temporary flat been vacant since you moved out? If so, you could get the meter reading again, and see how much water is being used with no one there. If the meter is still running with no use, then you know there is a leak or another user on your meter.

Is there a business in the  ioldimg? My friend had the same problem and the meter was attached

toronto63 wrote:

Is there a business in the  ioldimg? My friend had the same problem and the meter was attached

Not in ours but one directly next door according to Google. It's an energy auditing company though - not sure how much water they would use. It seems to us that it might be common to steal electricity in our area since we can see an apartment from our terrace where they have attached something to the main electricity wire which definitely doesn't look normal!

kateblank wrote:

It is really hard to answer a water question without really seeing what a person is using. To me, your water use sounds like a lot. But we had a friend stay with us for a month, and he said "I don't use much water," and our water usage doubled that month.

That said, €125/week is a LOT.

Has the temporary flat been vacant since you moved out? If so, you could get the meter reading again, and see how much water is being used with no one there. If the meter is still running with no use, then you know there is a leak or another user on your meter.

It was around €250 a month but still lots! We had a usage of a 7 person household plus an extra 25%.

I think the apartment has been vacant since then. Good idea we'll try to get another reading but it might be difficult since the landlord could be on to us. He did reduce the amount in the end so there's definitely something dodgy going on...

Hello. Our neighbour in Gozo had the same problem and it was the toilet. The ball float had broken off and the toilet was constantly filling. The overflow was internal so the water was going into the pan but made little noise and was not obvious.
Just like leaving a tap on the meter was turning with everything turned off.