Guests have tampered with meter?

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limousin-cottage
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Guests have tampered with meter?

Post by limousin-cottage »

I am wondering whether there is any way previous guests could have tampered with the electricity meter in my holiday let? It's just a small meter linked to the main meter in our own property. The type they sell on Amazon.fr. We had a group of Polish workers stay for a month a few weeks ago, and the two consecutive lettings have both surprised me at how little electricity they seem to have used. I know it works out at around 1 euro per day when no electric heating has been used. It has never been less than 7 or 8 euros for a week in Summer. The last two guests have used 4.5 euros for one week, and the current guest has used just 25 euros for a month. The cottage has electric hot water on heures creuses, and a washing machine. It just seems impossibly low. Anyone have any knowledge of these independent meters, and how I can check or reset it? In laymans terms LoL. Thanks very much guys.
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kevsboredagain
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Post by kevsboredagain »

A link to the product you refer to might be useful. What does the main meter do?
limousin-cottage
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Post by limousin-cottage »

Thanks, I am still looking for a link. Could be that it's no longer available as it's 5 years it was fitted, it's a basic sub-meter, fitted in the consumer unit in our gite, which runs off the main meter in our own house. It has readings for Heures Creuse HC, Heures Pleine HC and a third reading for the running total.
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greenbarn
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Post by greenbarn »

Does it have a tamper-evident seal? Once the cover over the connections is off it's simple to bridge out the meter so it's no longer recording. Then prior to departure or reading, remove the bridge, replace the cover and tamper seal with a new one off ebay and hope it looks close enough. :evil:

Or the meter might be faulty - it's not impossible. In the UK simple reconditioned meters are dirt cheap and it would cost less to swap one out than get it tested - don't know about where you are. From your description, if the meter is downstream of your main meter then it's probably your property rather than the electricity supply company's.

ETA - Thinking about it it would be simple to test by having say a 3kW electric heater switched on for half an hour and check for an increase in the reading of 1.5kWhours
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kevsboredagain
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Post by kevsboredagain »

A sub meter could be tampered with in the same manner as the main meter but as greenbarn says, there would normally be seals which make it hard to interfere with. Any tampering would have been removed when they left but could be worth asking an electrician to check it out of you're not sure what you're looking for. I'd also agree with the need to do a quick test of consumption metering yourself.
Zingara
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Post by Zingara »

Is it possible that they turned the thermostat down on the hot water, thus lowering consumption?
limousin-cottage
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Post by limousin-cottage »

Thanks guys. It's not something I can check at the moment because we have guests in unfortunately. Guests have no access to the water heater, so nothing could be turned down. It would be nice if the price of electricity had gone down but somehow I doubt it lol.
Leslie May
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Post by Leslie May »

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