Thames Water: More progress

This being the next episode in our water leak saga, summarised at references 1 thru 4 below.

The 7th May saw Thames Water have a second go at our leak. By way of preparation I removed the wooden housing which covers the pipework outside our back door, including the water intake pipe, the last few inches of which are overground rather than underground. Housing which contained several dustbin bags full of green foam peanuts by way of insulation. The peanuts were fine but some of the bags were in a bit of a state and some of the peanuts were to travel a surprisingly long way.

Thames Water did not take long, being done by late morning. A hole in the grass outside, a hole in the front lawn and a hole in the concrete (upper left, water intake above). The pleasant surprise was that they did not dig up a large chunk of our concrete drive, which we had been expecting. So all very quick and neat.

Which is more than can be said for the 1960s plastic drain pipe, usually hidden inside the housing. Too many kinks and not enough fall - which means that BH has to pour ferocious chemicals down the relevant sink from time to time. Peanuts in fresh dustbin bags and housing now back in place. 

Thames Water seemed to think that there might still be a leak, a small leak which I thought might be down to dripping taps inside. Time to get Home Serve in to replace the washers. Unless I decide that that is the sort of thing that I should still be able to do for myself.

But I thought I would wait a bit and see where usage was after the second attempt, compared with what it had been back at the beginning of the year. With the blue chunk left in the snap above representing a substantial (unpaid) bill.

Much better, although rather more than the 250 litres or so the two of us should be using each day. It looks as if most of the leak was dealt with on the first attempt, back in March. On the other hand, while the second attempt did not make much difference to usage, we do now have a new pipe running from road to house, so one less thing to worry about.

So it is now time (Wednesday afternoon) for more call centre time about the bill. Attempting to talk to a person failed, so I took a chance and went down the alternative WhatsApp road, which seemed to mean installing it on both telephone and laptop and giving away lots of permissions. But after a lot of rather tiresome messing around, I get started with Thames Water as a complete beginner on WhatsApp and now seem to be sat in their WhatsApp queue, which may well be better than being sat in their call centre queue. Let's hope I don't I don't get cross and just uninstall it.

PS WhatsApp appears to be part of the Facebook stable, which I was not at all pleased about.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/10/thames-water.html. We decide that we have a leak.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/01/thames-water-progress.html. Thames Water inspect the leak.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/01/thames-water-again.html. Call centre time.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/03/two-holes.html. The first attempt.

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