| Author |
Message |
Roz
Joined 17-03-2005
| | Posted on Monday, 07 May, 2007 - 12:16 pm: | |
Just in case it proves helpful - there has this morning been a sudden unexplained drop in water pressure in se23 with some houses/streets without any water supply at all. Thames Water are investigating but don't know the cause but have advised those of us with any supply to fill up kettles, pans etc now as it seems that some of us could have no supply for some hours. |
Fhssecretary
Joined 12-10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, 07 May, 2007 - 01:24 pm: | |
Not a drop here. Seems a bit ironic during a torrential downpour... |
Fhssecretary
Joined 12-10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, 07 May, 2007 - 01:25 pm: | |
I meant "not a drop of water coming out of the taps", not "no drop in pressure" |
Liz
Joined 26-04-2006
| | Posted on Monday, 07 May, 2007 - 01:30 pm: | |
Further up the hill in Dunoon Road, the water supply is coming and going (so my husband informs me whilst I'm at work with gallons of the stuff). He's using this as an excuse not to do any housework.... |
Fhssecretary
Joined 12-10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, 07 May, 2007 - 01:59 pm: | |
18" main gone apparently, all Honor Oak Rd area and much of SE19 too off, apparently
Supply may be restored by 6pm |
Domc
Joined 17-03-2005
| | Posted on Monday, 07 May, 2007 - 02:13 pm: | |
working at this end of the road, HO end. |
Liz
Joined 26-04-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, 08 May, 2007 - 08:34 am: | |
Nothing coming out of our taps (Dunoon Road) this morning, I'm told. Thames Water say it's a burst water main affecting SE23, 27 and 19. They're working on it but no word yet as to when the water will be back on. |
Fhssecretary
Joined 12-10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, 08 May, 2007 - 09:02 am: | |
The word on the street is not before TUES PM at the very earliest. Make sure you sting them for maximum compo! |
Michael
Joined 04-03-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, 08 May, 2007 - 09:12 am: | |
Plenty of water at the bottom of the hill. |
Roz
Joined 17-03-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, 08 May, 2007 - 02:46 pm: | |
TW have dropped off hundreds of bottles of water at the bottom of Tyson at the Devonshire Rd junction- we got a call yesterday to this effect ( did we all get one of these) and there were still plenty there this morning. However I doubt whether people will want to drink stuff thats been lying around in case its been tampered with so not sure whether this is helpful to anyone who wants more than a cold bath. Perhaps they should do a house to house drop of drinking water instead as safety is more guaranteed. |
Chrisb
Joined 08-05-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, 08 May, 2007 - 07:58 pm: | |
Not that I want to jump on the compensation bandwagon, but given the price I pay Thames water for the wet stuff I feel entitled to claw back what I can, so how do you apply? Our pressure has been all over the place, almost disappearing on several occasions. |
Schumacher
Joined 08-05-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, 08 May, 2007 - 08:27 pm: | |
Would anyone know how i could contact the owner of the old Midland (HSBC) bank in Dartmouth road? |
Roz
Joined 17-03-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, 08 May, 2007 - 10:18 pm: | |
Midland Bank- Best to try a land registry search which can reveal the owners.
Compensation- suggest you try the Ofwat website which may give some guidance. It does seem to have been bad, with so many homes without water for so long. Hope Dunoon Road is now sorted? |
Roz
Joined 17-03-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, 08 May, 2007 - 10:27 pm: | |
Actually, nothing useful on Ofwat- below is an extract copied from the TW website on service guarantees and compensation levels;
Interruptions to your water supply.
We sometimes have to interrupt your water supply to repair leaks, connect new customers or make improvements to our system. We will give 48 hours written notice if a planned interruption to your supply is going to last more than 4 hours. We will also tell you when we expect the supply to be restored.
If there is an unplanned interruption, for example when a water main bursts, we will put your water supply back on within 12 hours of knowing about this problem. If a larger "strategic" main bursts, we guarantee to fix it within 48 hours. We can’t give any warning of unplanned interruptions but we will tell you when your supply will be restored as soon as we can. If we do not give you advance notice of planned interruptions, or we fail to restore your supply within the time promised, we will automatically pay our domestic customers £20 and our business customers £50. For each extra 24 hour period that you have no water, we will pay an additional £10 to domestic customers and £25 to business customers.
Low pressure.
If the water pressure in our pipework serving your property (which usually ends at the boundary stop tap or edge of the street) falls below "seven metres static head" in other words 70% of our normal minimum level of service), you can claim £25. You must have experienced loss of pressure twice in a 28 day period and the loss of pressure must have lasted more than one hour on each occasion. You can only receive one payment under this guarantee in any financial year. This guarantee does not apply if the low pressure is caused by work we have to do to our own supply network or through drought conditions. |
Sherwood
Joined 30-03-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, 09 May, 2007 - 01:04 pm: | |
Schumacher,
You could try posting a letter to it.
Sometimes people have their mail redirected.
Possibly the Post Office would tell you if mail has been redirected. |
Liz
Joined 26-04-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, 09 May, 2007 - 02:47 pm: | |
Dunoon Road has come back on in last couple of hours, even reaching the top floor of our house. TW have been quite helpful when we've called. It seems there's been a succession of bursts in the mains in Dulwich Wood Park. They diverted some water from another area to our area - but only a thin trickle so it didn't help out much in high rise buildings or high rise areas. They thought they'd repaired the last one at 3 am this morning.....but then it burst somewhere else! It's an old Victorian pipeline which needs replacing, apparently.
But, like I say, it seems to be gushing nicely now. Certainly makes you appreciate the stuff.
By the way, I went past the Tyson Rd end of Devonshire Rd on numerous occasions looking for these drinking water supplies and couldn't see any at all.
As for compensation, they say they're looking into all the implications. It's definitely worth applying, I think.
Of course, if you live in the boggy swamplands of Lower Forest Hill, you must be feeling pretty smug at the moment watching your lofty neighbours suffer! |
Sherwood
Joined 30-03-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, 09 May, 2007 - 03:12 pm: | |
Sometimes I am glad that I live on the wrong side of the tracks! |
Dommy
Joined 27-05-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, 09 May, 2007 - 07:30 pm: | |
No water here in Thorpewood Avenue... |
Liz
Joined 26-04-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, 09 May, 2007 - 08:17 pm: | |
And I spoke too soon. Once you lot got home from work and turned your taps on, my supply dwindled away. I still have some in the kitchen but it doesn't get any higher. So bathing my little girl this evening involved running up and down stairs with buckets of water. We now have a tank of drinking water at the end of Dunoon Road.
Latest from Thames Water (I barely need to introduce myself to their staff any more, I've called that often) is that it is fixed BUT they are only cautiously allowing water to return to the pipe for fear of triggering another burst. So there are engineers watching it as it fills. It's an 18' pipe (no metric measurements at Thames Water, I notice) so it's going to take a long time at this rate. And they warn that some customers in the SE23 area will have problems during peak usage times. |
Roz
Joined 17-03-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, 10 May, 2007 - 05:50 am: | |
I can sympathise with TW's problems and their efforts to resolve this however I came across my yearly Direct debit notification yesterday which reminded me that we are paying in excess of £350 per annum for a water service. It cannot be that long along ago ( can it?) that I was paying £70 pa. I had forgotten that they were so high- the problem with DD when you know longer pay attention to detailed bills. We have a supply in Ewelme thankfully but no pressure so a shower is impossible and only a slow running bath is possible. I spoke to TW about compensation yesterday and they said it depends on how long this problem persists for. From my previous posting it would seem that the maximum is likely to be £25 per household for low pressure, but its those without any water at all that are clearly suffering the most and I doubt that £10 per day will make up for that.
I have always found the pressure around here very good which effectively gives us a power shower without a pump, so I hope that this will not be permanently lost after this debacle.
Do you think its time we ( FHS, local residents, Councillors, MP etc), collectively asked for a formal statement from TW, say early next week if things have not improved,or at least tried to get some media attention to this problem? It would seem that a permanent solution to this problem may be a little protracted so as Liz says, this could be a problem for some time. |
Hilltopgeneral
Joined 24-03-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, 10 May, 2007 - 08:34 am: | |
Bills have gone up by up by something like 50% in the last two years, in order that Thames can continue to pay out a good level of profits to its owner, RWE, and make a start on addressing the result of years of chronic incompetence and underinvestment.
The results of not having water, in terms of the incovenience it causes, are disproportionate even to the grossly inflated charges we now pay. I for one will be cancelling my direct debit rather than holding my breath for some paltry "compensation". |
Sherwood
Joined 30-03-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, 10 May, 2007 - 09:14 am: | |
Have a look at this report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6639613.stm
MPs attack weak water watchdog. |
Roz
Joined 17-03-2005
| | Posted on Sunday, 13 May, 2007 - 06:38 am: | |
Pressure seems to be all back to normal with us- is that everywhere? Hopefully everyone is now suitably washed and spanking clean! I for one will be submitting a claim for loss/reduction of service. |
Liz
Joined 26-04-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, 15 May, 2007 - 08:28 am: | |
We returned from a weekend away (in very wet Dartmoor) on Monday and tentatively tried our taps. Imagine our joy to discover full water pressure throughout the house! The tank of drinking water at the end of Dunoon Rd has been removed.
I too shall be submitting a claim.
However, on the way back from the FHSoc General meeting on Thursday night, I spotted a couple of bedraggled Thames Water engineers working on pipes opposite Fairlawn School. I stopped to chat and they were pretty pessimistic about the longterm infrastructure of our water system in this area. They said "management" was very concerned (I'm paraphrasing some more colourful language). And they said this was the first time they'd been asked to work overtime. |
Hilltopgeneral
Joined 24-03-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, 15 May, 2007 - 08:41 am: | |
I think the shocking state of the mains in the area is pretty obvious, from the number of places you can water welling out of the roads and pavements on a dry day.
But then, fixing all that is what we are paying the much bigger bills for... |
Sherwood
Joined 30-03-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, 15 May, 2007 - 10:20 am: | |
Replacement of the infrastructure is essential. But in most profit-making organisations the capital investment to pay for it is raised from investors/shareholders. In this case the extra costs are raised from the customers and the shareholders still get increased dividends. |
Hilltopgeneral
Joined 24-03-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, 15 May, 2007 - 01:54 pm: | |
Yes, and it is so much better that way isn't it... if only we could all operate in poorly regulated monopolies in which there is an absolute requirement for our services!
Nice work if you can get it |
Triangle
Joined 08-05-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, 15 May, 2007 - 04:27 pm: | |
It does seem that the water watchdog is all bark and no bite. I note that Ofwat is located in Birmingham. You need a long stick to beat Thames Water from there... You also need an incentive. I suggest they have local offices based in the water company districts so they might experience first hand the raw deal that the customer often gets... And perhaps their salaries be tied in to the local water suppliers performance!!! At the moment, it's a bit like having your dog on one of those long extending leads... You're still in touch, but not much control! |
Roz
Joined 17-03-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, 16 May, 2007 - 01:19 am: | |
Perhaps something the FHS can take up, if only to give the issue the publicity it deserves, and to hopefully shame TW into taking some action? In Central London TW simply refuse to guarantee mains pressure which is why so many new blocks of flats have to have tank and pump rooms. As these involve various pieces of fancy equipment these also go wrong and are not an ideal solution.
How difficult would it be to re nationalise the water companies, or at least make them more accountable to the public rather than shareholders. There are just some things that need to remain in the public domain for the public interest... |
Hilltopgeneral
Joined 24-03-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, 17 May, 2007 - 08:26 pm: | |
Please claim via the following link:
https://www.thameswateruk.co.uk/UK/region/en_gb/co ntent/gss_payment |
Roz
Joined 17-03-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, 17 May, 2007 - 10:43 pm: | |
Unfortunately my recently procured McAfee Site Advisor advised me to avoid this link as there is a problem with the security certificate. Think I'll just phone them tomorrow.... |
Bigjulie
Joined 09-04-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, 17 May, 2007 - 11:48 pm: | |
Keep away from McAfee - dreadful. Are we on the internet provider thread? |
Calvin
Joined 20-02-2006
| | Posted on Friday, 18 May, 2007 - 08:32 am: | |
Mine (not McAfee) also advised that the certificate had expired. It happens all the time; you just have to be aware & then take the decision whether you feel safe visiting or not.
On the Thames Water thread... |
