An inexpensive reducer placed in a water pipe will ensure that all eight homes in a Murrayville cul de sac will pay equally for water consumption.
In July, Mark Fettback, who lives in one of the eight high-end homes in the 5200 block of 219 A Street, asked council to remedy an inequity that left his and six other houses with significantly higher consumption costs that the one neighbour’s house.
Fettback explained that when someone in his house, or any of the other six in the cul de sac, runs a bath with 80 gallons of water, it will fill faster than the eighth home.
What sets Fettback’s house and the six others part is the size of the water pipe running from the street to their houses.
The standard is a one inch pipe. Theirs is a 1.25 inch pipe, while a one inch pipe was in place when the eighth house was built.
Apart from the cost, the only difference the pipe diameter makes, Fettback explained to Township council, is that the wider pipe fills up the tub faster.
Fettback’s house, and the six other houses with the larger diameter water pipe, pay about $1,800 a year for water. These seven houses are all on water metres.
The eighth house, which Fettback said is the largest, pays $400 a year. It does not have a water meter.
“We just want to be equal with Murrayville,” he said, adding that the seven houses in the cul de sac are among only 43 in the Township that have water meters.
He offered a solution: a $2.50 reducer for each of the seven houses.
In September, council agreed that the seven houses will be offered water at the same rate as the eight house “if and only if the dwellings install a flow restrictor that limits the intake flow to that of a normal one inch pipe.”