Anyone got any ideas where on earth my electricity meter might be? We have owned our house for four years and have never been able to locate the meter. It's not where we were told it was when we moved in and it's not in the house; there is a plastic box by the gate which looks a likely contender but we have no key to open it.
I'd really like to know because we only use our house for holidays and the estimated bills we get for electricity have shot up in the last year or so - they appear to take no account of the actual usage in recent years now and I have a bill for over 300 euros for a period when we spent 7 days in the house...
We are with Soregies so no helpful English speaking helpline that I can find.
Thanks
Vikki
My electric and gas meters are outside near the front gate about ten metres from the property.
As suggested the electric meter can be opened with the tip of a flat screwdriver. My gas meter can also be opened with a screwdriver, there is no lock for a key.
Thanks Brian. None of the neighbours seem to have a key (despite the fact there are several boxes - but the neighbours those boxes seem to relate to are in houses which I think were converted fairly recently, so may have interior meters) but I didn’t think of the mairie.
Thanks for the help!
Thanks - definitely not inside and we have no gas so I’m pretty sure it is that box. It seems to need a key but nobody seems to have one. Can you buy them? Or do I need to persuade Soregies to send me one?
Sorry Anne but you're mistaken. Our meter is inside the house but our neighbours in the HLM next door have their meter outside. Lots of places have external meters.
Since meters will have been read whilst you have owned your house, yours will have been included. It is clearly the white box. Mairies often have keys to all manner of things and I imagine a meter box would be one of them. We have a sort of emergency set up in this commune and at this hamlet I am one of the people with emergency and rescue training (albeit in the UK) so available for floods, forest fires, accidents and so on. One of the things we 'volunteers' know is that there are people who can access everything such as hydrants, the defibrillators and keys for various other things. Thus, by deduction I am assuming that in an emergency an electrician must have access to a meter box, that the mairie should have one. Apart from that, ask neighbours if any of them has a key because lots of us check meters ourselves too. I would be very surprised if you do not find one very quickly.
Mine is outside in a white plastic box. In fact most of village meters are outside on or by the street.
Hi sorry to disagree but mine s in a grey plastic box ( no key) on a post in the road outside our house maybe 50 metres from the house
Hi, I help out my British friends who have a holiday home here, they have the same problem with EDF, I had to go take a picture of the meter the other day, it took me 20 minutes to find it , in an outbuilding, way up high ;) The box near the gate is most likely the gas meter, only the gas meter readers have a key to open it. Electricity meters are always somewhere in the house or garage, or outbuilding, but never outside (it would be too easy to illegally connect to them if they were). Whereabouts are you???
probably is the box you refer to. Normally can be opened with a flat screwdriver or some boxes have triangular key