Water is Precious

An increasing number of local authorities are installing water meters on domestic connections as water conservation becomes an international issue. Carterton District Council has almost completed the mission of installing around 2,140 meters and bedding in its water billing system.

NCS’s Gordon Hills says electronically loading data from spreadsheets to the billing system was reasonably straightforward, but it is the work required to generate accurate data which needs careful attention.

Carterton – New Zealand’s daffodil capital – started installing the meters about a year ago along with the task of matching each meter serial number to the correct property address and valuation number. The town was divided into eight rounds, with each route mapped out to provide the most efficient system for the meter reader to follow, using a MetersMobile handheld device to record water use in a systematic order.

As the meter reader reaches each property, the meter must be located - and there is provision for difficult-to-find meters to be noted via the handheld – data is logged and instantly matched against information specific to that property to ensure the correct details are being loaded for that address.

Details for each round are loaded onto the handheld and a reader can usually cover one round in a day. The meter readings are then downloaded back at the council, the handheld recharged overnight, ready for checking another round of meter reading.

Gordon says it is an efficient and effective system, avoiding mistakes that would be likely to occur with manual recordings and re-entering into a database. The information loaded on the handheld guards against inaccurate readings or mis-matches in billing details.

Information appearing on the handheld will automatically signal to the meter reader if the water consumption has rocketed or if the meter has stopped.

Carterton’s support services manager Julie Hallam says the first reading was done manually to ensure the information being recorded into spreadsheets was correct and to generate the walking order for the reader.

Working from the rates files turned up some unforeseen problems, such as street numbers in areas of new infill or subdivision being out of sequence, or billing addresses not matching letterbox numbers.

“On the whole it’s been pretty successful but if we were doing it again I think we would work on smaller areas at a time, instead of trying to log information across the entire town in one go,” says Julie.

Carterton carried out an education campaign in advance of introducing water meters and allowed time for leaks and other water repairs to be made. Residential readings are initially being made quarterly but will extend to twice a year. The annual household water allowance is currently set at 300 cubic metres.

Other councils using the new MetersMobile include South Waikato, Tasman, Nelson City and Rangitikei. Marshalls Energy Company is also using the new version. Taupo District Council, the Solomon Islands Electric Authority and Solomon Islands Water Authority are using the previous MetersMobile system.