This just spin.
RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland Opened this morning’s show with breaking developments concerning the controversial water meters.
Finally.
Some coverage about that very strange Siteserv deal on RTÉ?
Not so fast.
Head of Irish Water asset management Jerry Grant, told presenter Cathal MacCoille how they detected 30,000 suspected leaks in the last quarter of 2014, based on “a sweep” of 413,000 meter readings.
Oh.
He explained there are “leak alarm indicators” on the meters, and he said Irish Water expects to find 60,000 to 70,000 leaks “when” all the meters are installed.
Jerry Grant: “We have a leak alarm indicator on the meters. The meter is electronic and it store a lot of data, not just a meter reading. And one of the things it picks up is a continuous nightflow. And if the continuous nightflow drops, doesn’t drop below a threshold figure, that’s very indicative of a leak, because clearly, during the night, you’d expect the meter to drop.”
Cathail MacCoille: “OK, you’re launching this scheme, what’s the deal?”
Grant: “The deal at the moment is that the Regulator has agreed that we should go ahead with an interim arrangement for €3.4million and begin to tackle these leaks. We have a proposal with the Regulator now to spend up to €51million which we think would cater for at least 25,000…”
MacCoille: “And you’ll spend that money over what period?”
Grant: “2015, 2016, it may run into 2017, depending on the speed with which people will come back to us. Because obviously this scheme is about entering people’s property, it’s about providing a service on your own property. And to do that we have to have an engagement and agreement from the householders.”
MacCoille: “And €51million, it’s provided for this year and next year, would enable you to fix how many leaks? How many properties do you think?”
Grant: “We think about 25,000 leaks. I think what’s interesting is that if we end up with about 60,000 leaks, in total, it’s quite clear from the pilot work that we’ve done, that at least 60% of those are within the building. Now we’re not addressing free-of-charge leaks within the building.”
MacCoille: “That’s up to the customer.”
Grant: “That’s up to the customer. We will help people locate you know the types of leak and give them advise on how…”
MacCoille: “So what will you do and pay for?”
Grant: “Where a leak occurs between the building, between the external wall of the building and our stop cock, we will address those leaks, so generally under driveways, in front gardens and so on.”
MacCoille: “Now, obviously, you’ll be fixing leaks forever but, in terms of the leaks that you’ve, that this 30,000-plus, how long will it take you to get, how many do you reckon, on that basis that you have, when you’ve looked at everybody…”
Grant: “These 30,000 leaks have shown up about 46million litres of water per day. We produce that amount of water to supply Limerick city and the environs of Limerick – that’s an amazing amount of water. So if we can fix 40 to 50% of those leaks, we should recover, given that the bigger leaks are probably external to the property, we should recover 20- 25million litres per day, from that source. This is a very quick win for us.”
MacCoille: “How long will it take you to do that? Enough to supply Limerick?”
Grant: “Yes that’s right.”
MacCoille: “So how long will it take to do that?”
Grant: “Between 2015 and 2016, subject to the approval of the Regulator, which I’ve no doubt will come.”
MacCoille: “That’s very quick.”
Grant: “Yeah absolutely, this is the easiest and quickest…”
MacCoille: “Makes you wonder why it didn’t happen before now?”
Grant: “Well I suppose there were a number of reasons, first of all, the meter tells you that the leak is there, we didn’t have the meters, this is the benefit of meters. Meters help the customer and they help Irish Water. And quite frankly there’s been a lot of talk about the meters but this is the first real dividend from the meters because they’re identifying leakage that can be easily recovered because we can identify precisely where it is.”
Listen back here
Older readers may recall Jerry was the managing director at RPS Consulting Engineers from 2002 until 2012. RPS advised Dublin City Council on the Poolbeg incinerator project while John Tierney was Dublin City Manager. Mr Tierney is currently the managing director of Irish Water while the former head of project communications at RPS, Elizabeth Arnett, is now head of communications and corporate services at Irish Water.
Good times.
Irish Water suspects enough water to fill 18 Olympic pools lost daily (RTÉ)
Meanwhile:
“Over 12,500 meters were installed across the city by the end of last month, with the council called in to repair nearly 250 leaks…contractors working for Irish Water have damaged pipes outside one in every 50 homes.”
Water meter installation damages 1 in 50 pipes (breakingNews)
I’m not a fan of the way Irish Water was set up and the way it’s being run, but it’s hard to look on the detection and repair of widespread leaking of potable water as anything other than a good thing.
“I’m not a fan … but …” Another classic bait and switch comment by an IW employee. Well done, Grouse, well done, comments like this will have us signing up in our droves!
Ya Grouse. You IW employee, you. You think we don’t know? You think we’re that stupid? Why don’t you go back to work? With Irish Water. Have some Irish Water babies there, Grouse.
Yeah, you Irish Water, Grouse lover, you. Why don’t you get married? Why? Why don’t you? You think we don’t know, that you want to get married to Grouse and Irish Water, you?
Mikeyfex. I don’t think I’ve seen that name around here before. Who’s to say you aren’t a professional dissenter funded by an Irish bar in New Jersey? Anyone here recognise this guy?
More a Mole than Grouse – I’d say.
definitely a dirty little rat
Or a snivelling tit weasel?
Is that referring to me, Joe?
Definitely not Mikey – I fondly imagine you as more of a ferret
…fine then. Some say brooding wolf but whatever.
I comment here regularly, Xena. Do you suspect I’m in really deep cover? Maybe since before Irish Water was even established?
Come now, anyone who admits mild support of even supposed indifference to water meters is an IW employee/FG shill/ etc.
That’s hardly likely sunshine, you just used classic NLP opinion manipulation technique and were first to comment, it’s typical astroturfing form but I wholeheartedly accept you are not what I said you were. Untwist your knickers etc.
Xenu?
NLP – lol. Also available for belief: pickup artistry and the tooth fairy.
John, give up the act. Xena got you. How dare you even suggest that monitoring the waste of a scarce resource is a good thing!!
Two exclamation marks!! What could they signify? A high-pitched squeal?
You’re a real princess keyboard warrior you know that?!!!!!!!!
I work in Irish Water (plum job given to me because of my FG background and links to DOB). I can confirm that Grouse works in our social media unit buy that his opinions are his own
+1
Water meters, good; Irish Water, bad.
But they are not fixing the leaks, they are monitoring them and if anything the installation of meters have caused plenty of leaks on their own.
Well, it’d be cool if they announced it after they made some inroads into fixing them, alright. Rather than the grand intention. Here’s hoping they actually do.
How convenient. Your use of the word “cool”. Nobody is falling for your charade.
Ah give it a rest.
He spoke very well and got an important message across. he has an easier message to sell to be fair – “we’re spotting leaks and helping you fix them.”
Like Grouse says – this is good news. Fixing leaks that would previously have been pissing a valuable resource into the ground.
What a load of poop. We’ve known there are leaks in the mains distribution for longer than most voters have been alive, and the meters do not help to locate those because the leaks are in the pipes upstream of the meters. And talking about dripping taps when you’re losing *50%* of your water before it gets to the tap in the first place is taking the mickey.
Great times bodger. Great times.
Keep fighting the fight.
Lolz
Isn’t the problem though that our piping system is very old and needs replacing generally, not just for leaks but for possible toxins that end up in your tap water.
If all the pipes need replacing, why do we need €550m (to start with, and exlcuding whatever extras Dinny can screw out of the FG government for delays and protests), to tell us that some pipes need more replacing than others.
Truth, is water meters may be good for conservation, they may marginally assist identifying leaks, but water meters are DEFINITELY good for Dinny and the company he picked up for a steal. The question remains, is the Siteserv deal to this Fine Gael government what the award of the second mobile licence was in 1994 to the last FG government?
Most likely it is and will see the same punishment meted out
But I’m guessing it can only detect leaks between the meter and the house. I would have thought that most leaks actually occur before the water gets to the house. Will this identify most leaks, or just a fraction that occur between the meter and the house?
Also, how many of these leaks are caused by installing the meters in the first place?
I think, if they’re detecting based on continuous (atypical) flow during the night, it would mean they could detect a leak anywhere in the house? They’re measuring how much the house is using, and watching for weird readings.
They’re going to get important information on my toilet habits. I flush every 60 seconds, whether I need to or not.
I think they said in their sample since the start of the year that 9% of the water lost was between meter and house.
Although I’m not sure how they got that without water usage statistics back dated over a number of years per household. How do they know if water is leaking or somebody is just watering their garden every day. I suppose if you fix the easy 9% as you know where the potential leak is, cut down on water usage by making people more aware of how much they use, then concentrate on the big jobs like replacing miles and miles of old pipe.
Fix the easy 9%?
1. Really? 9%? I call shenanigans and ask to see the audit of that figure.
2. If you think going to hundreds of thousands of homes to fix dripping taps is the easy bit, but digging up ONE PIPE and replacing it is the hard bit, then I think you don’t have a very good handle on what the word “easy” is.
3. We haven’t concentrated on the pipes for fifty years, that’s the problem. That’s allegedly why we suddenly need a new tax to pay for what all the old taxes were *supposed* to be paying for. So why do you think we’d suddenly start doing what we have avoided for decades? Because if you think privatisation leads to better standards of public utilities, you’ve never heard of a wonderful woman called Margaret Thatcher, who destroyed the public utilities in the UK to teach the rest of the world what a horrible idea it was…
This is some pretty great news.
46 million litres is not to be sniffed at.
These water meters will only be effective once we reach a critical mass of installations.
I hope they fix RBB’s gaff first
Dublin tap water tastes like poo though. Also if you drink water you are an FG blue shirt reactionary fascist. We know where you live.
I’d say your claim to expert knowledge on the taste of poo is backed by extensive field sampling.
It’s not pub talk either – you’re not just some bar -stool expert.
I see what you did there.
Those RPS connections are enough to cause ones temperature to rise a couple of degrees.
They’ll only be able to detect that a leak exists downstream of the meter (i.e. in your garden or house) without further stopcocks or shut offs in your own plumbing the meter will be no use for isolating the leak further.
These meters will initially detect a huge amounts of leaks as it’s the only part of the water system that hasn’t been subject to this manner of leak detection yet.
Unless there is damage occuring to your property or there is a proper per consumption charge in place people will have little to no motivation to address this leaks.
Side note: If the leak alarms are set to the same parameters as the previous Non Domestic Metering project then there will be a lot of false positives found. Hopefully in the years since then the flow loggers are more sophisticated and the leak alarms will be more accurate.
Thats what i was wondering, alright. What if you can’t afford / you’re just not arsed fixing the leak?
I think we should all take the positives from this even if they are false
like positive spin?
is that clockwise or anticlockwise…anyone?
It’s in your best financial interest to fix the leaks.
No it isn’t, not with a flat fee for water.
Who’s fault was that?
+1
so irish water can tell in almost real time when your house is unoccupied and they’ll pass this info to their contractors? better invest in cctv/intruder alarms.
Sometimes I’m in the house , but i dont be using water.
Other times I’m out of the house but the dishwasher / washing machine is on.
Better invest in tinfoil hats.
Can we rename this great nation to Canuteland? I think it would suit better.
Not really though.
The fable about Canute; ordering the tides not to come in wasn’t a demonstration of his delusion or hubris but his humble example of his limited power even as a king. Canute wasn’t a moron, basically.
Feckit
I turned down a post in RPS back in the day.
Look at how handy it could a bin’
How come MacCoille wasn’t constantly interrupting while asking the same disingenuous question?
Oh hang on, that’s reserved for government opposition and protest groups.