Where is my water meter in a typical UK home?
In most homes the water meter is outside, under a small lid near the point where your land meets the street. So if you are wondering where your water meter is, start with the pavement or footpath outside the house, then the front garden and the edge of the drive. The lid is round or square, plastic or metal, and easy to miss under leaves, gravel or a parked car.
Not every home follows that pattern. If an outside meter could not be fitted, the water company may have put one indoors on the incoming pipe, usually beside the stop tap under the kitchen sink. Some sit in a garage or a cupboard by the front door. For farms and cottages down a track, look at the lane end: meters there are often on a verge, nowhere near the house.
In the pavement or footpath along your front boundary
In the front garden, a gravel border or at the edge of the drive
Under the kitchen sink, next to the stop tap
Flats: a shared cupboard, a landing or a basement meter room
Farms and homes down a track: a roadside verge
Lifting the cover and reading it safely
Many outside lids lift with a flat screwdriver pushed into the slot or gap at the edge. Wear gloves, because the chamber can hide spiders, slugs, broken glass and sharp stones, and never put your fingers where you cannot see them. You may find a pad of foam or polystyrene on top of the meter. That is there to keep frost off, so lift it out gently and put it back when you have finished.
Some water in the chamber is normal after rain and does not prove a leak by itself. If clear water keeps filling it in dry weather, tell your water company, because a leak at the meter or its fittings is usually theirs to look at. Wipe the glass with a cloth before reading. The black digits count whole cubic metres and the red digits count litres; our advice guide on reading a water meter walks through the sums.
When you cannot find a meter
Start with your bill. A metered bill works out charges from readings and usually prints the meter's serial number, which is also marked on the meter itself. That number is the surest way to tell your meter from a neighbour's. If your bill is based on the rateable value of the house instead, you may not have a meter at all, so there may be nothing to find.
If you are metered and still cannot work out where your water meter is located, ring the water company named on your bill. They can usually tell you where it was fitted. Check every small lid along the front first, including any in a shared path or drive, because older streets sometimes have meters grouped together. A lid buried under tarmac, block paving or turf is worth reporting too, since the company needs to reach it.
What the meter's position says about which pipe is yours
As a general rule, your water company is responsible for the main under the street and the short branch that runs from it to the edge of your property. Past that edge, the pipe feeding your kitchen tap is normally the homeowner's to look after. When the meter sits at the boundary, it marks that change: a leak on the house side of the meter is most likely on your pipe, and one on the street side is most likely the company's.
An indoor meter does not move the boundary. If yours is under the sink, the pipe beneath the front garden is still usually yours, even though water reaches it before the meter. It also means the meter cannot record anything lost on that buried stretch. Some older terraces and shared drives have one supply pipe feeding several homes, and the owners then usually share the job of putting it right. Your water company can confirm the position for your address.
A 30 minute leak check using the meter
Choose a time when nobody needs water. Shut every tap, and check that the washing machine, dishwasher, garden hose and any water softener are idle. If there is a cold water tank in the loft, give it time to finish refilling. Now watch the meter. Many have a small spinning wheel or pointer that turns with even a trickle, so any movement there means water is passing.
For a firmer answer, note the full reading and the time, wait 30 minutes and read it again. A change means water went somewhere while everything was off. Next, close the internal stop tap and repeat. If the meter still creeps on and it sits outside, the most likely place is the buried pipe running from the meter into the house. If it stops, the loss is indoors, and these are the usual places to check:
A toilet cistern running quietly into the pan
A dripping tap or shower head
An overflow pipe trickling outside
A float valve in the loft tank that never quite shuts
Failing those, a pipe hidden inside a floor or wall
Meters a long way from the house
Across Norfolk, Suffolk, the Fens and rural Essex, plenty of homes have a meter at the roadside and a pipe running a long way to the house, along a track, across a paddock or under a yard. The meter check works just the same, but the answer covers that whole length. Often nobody knows the route either, especially when the pipe went in long before the present owners arrived.
On a long run, we listen along the probable route on foot with a ground microphone for water forcing its way out, and switch to tracer gas, a hydrogen and nitrogen mix, if the pipe is plastic or the escape too faint to hear. A run longer than 30 m, a shared main or a pipe whose route is not known falls outside our no find, no fee on home water leaks; full conditions are on our terms page. Those jobs cost the price we agreed, leak found or not.
When to call us
Ring when the meter keeps moving with everything off, when the water company writes to say readings show water passing all the time, or when a wet strip appears in the lawn or a soft patch in the drive. One of the first things our engineer Charlie asks is how many metres separate the outside meter from your indoor stop tap, and what covers the ground between them: lawn, block paving, a concrete path or a conservatory.
The search is done from the surface. We locate the leak with one test, check it with a different one, then mark and photograph the spot so whoever digs knows where to begin. The written report, with the location, methods, readings and photographs, is yours once the visit is settled in full. Before any insurance claim, read the policy: only some home policies cover trace and access, and some insurers insist on approving the work first. We can usually repair the pipe too, on a separate quote.