Had this advice come in from our water provider reminding us to protect your water meter:
“During frost, your installation is in danger.
Here are some practical tips to protect it and avoid repair costs:
If Your meter is placed OUTSIDE YOUR ACCOMMODATION,
Insulate the walls of the manhole with polystyrene sheets and fill it with bags of polystyrene beads.
Make sure you close your eyes.
Never use dead leaves, straw or glass wool.
If Your meter is INSIDE YOUR ACCOMMODATION, in a cellar or garage,
Protect it with an insulating material (glass wool, foam sheath).
Do the same for your pipes.
In case of prolonged absence
Do not completely interrupt your heating,
Drain your installation using the drain located after your meter
Make sure the post-meter valve is closed.
Your water meter measures your water consumption, it is therefore placed under your responsibility. Leaks caused by frost can cause damage to your home.”
Luckily, I had a bag full of polystyrene loops handy which I just dumped into my water service box.
Ours has polystyrene in the lid, for insulation obviously - I was puzzled as to why I kept finding it randomly placed close to, but not over, the regard when we arrived for a stay. Even wondered if some of the local kids were playing silly devils.
It turns out the explanation is that the regard was placed in ground that quickly saturates when it rains heavily and it fills completely with water, the polystyrene ensures that the lid then floats off.
I bought some slate pieces to weigh it down - which I also found displaced, I suspect the meter reader did not understand their purpose and could not be bothered to replace them - thinking that they merely impeded his (or her) access.
I think I need a “veuillez remplacer les pierres” sign.
sounds like the regard itself is filling with water… and the poly + lid thingy just floats (as seems reasonable).
If that is the case, someone (the council/SAUR) needs to realign the regard… and/or redirect the surface water…
Our land is pretty flat and the regard is not that deep.
I suspect that it is only periods of sustained heavy rain which temporarily exceed the ability of water to drain away - the water table must be a metre down or so there even at its highest and the regard does not go that deep. The plot falls away slightly towards the south west (the gravel driveway in which the regards was placed being almost the highest/NE corner of the plot). Beyond the SW border there is an area which does flood in the wetter months but it is about 50cm lower than the lowest part of our garden - and the wettest I’ve seen is maybe 10cm water pooling above ground level.
Actual standing water on the drive/lawn at that point is never more than a cm or so.
However to stop the area flooding you’d have to prevent rain falling over a couple of hundred square metres at least which is not practical, and even then it might soak in from elsewhere.
Ah… our little village was “redone” in 2012. Mains water, electricity, telephone, sewage… and storm drains…
chaos for many, many months… but when it rains nowadays the bulk of the water which rampages down every slope and road… is carefully led away and eventually goes down storm drains (hurrah) instead of into properties and onto the gardens…
Still one or two things to be sorted but it’s so much better than it was before…
The waterboard offered us a large green box… which they promised to set into the ground. Huh… I didn’t like the sound of that… too intrusive visually… and the company were happy to oblige with the smaller round regard… when they discovered we are built on solid rock. They have promised to raise this regard (which is just below surface), using its telescopic facility (don’t ask me… ).
In fact there is a drainage ditch running between my property and the road along the northwest side, and a soakaway ditch on the south-western edge between us and the lower area which I described earlier (as far as I know our guttering drains into that but I’ve never managed to prove it), so surface drainage is adequate - but the gravel driveway saturates in heavy rain - it’s not run off so can’t be diverted, it’s just a 200m2 are on which rain is falling - so no “diversion” is really possible. The soil is sandy which makes it even more odd but I wonder if there is something more impermeable underneath.
I know you’re only joking… but we’ve been seriously hoping that Time Team will come and look down our ancient tunnel… (it should have dried out, now that we no longer send “stuff” down it… ahem…)
Rumours say that it links with blah blah blah… down in the valley… but no real proof exists nowadays…
