Morning! Can any of you lovely lot make head or tail of this? It’s my first reading and I have no idea…

by Teaandjammytoast

22 comments

  2. Gotta love the logic that made each dial turn in the opposite direction to the previous one.

    I think it reads 59878.1 though you usually ignore the final red digit for submitting readings.

  4. As much as I love railing against Americanisms I think this one really is “Meter”.

    ​

    Would be delighted to be wrong 😀

  5. Have you got a previous reading to help.

    It’s hard to tell but you go for the lower number when between two numbers. It looks like 69878 to me but u/Acceptable-Sentence reckons 5 for the first digit.

    Usually when you fill it in online it will show you the previous reading so you can check what is likely. It shouldn’t have gone up by 10,000 kWh so you should be able to judge from that!

  6. 59878 for sure, used to work for an energy company and have to decipher these photos from time to time!

  8. What is that? Is that one of them there newfangled wireless radio thingamajigs? You youngsters and your technology.

  11. 59,878 kWh

    The trick is to look at what a number is closest to, then use the smaller number to work out which side of that it is.

    * Start with the red tenths. Its not used as part of the reading, it’s just to work out what the ones is – and as it’s between 1 and 2m the ones must have just passed over.
    * The rightmost ones is reading closest to 8, so could be 7 or 8. Because of the tenths we know it’s 8.
    * The 10s is closest to 8, so could be 70 or 80. Because of ones we know it’s 78 rather than 88.
    * The 100s is closest to 9, so could be 800 or 900. Because of 10s we know it’s 878 rather than 978.
    * The 1,000s is closest to 0, so could be 9,000 or 0,000. Because of 100s we know it’s 9,878.
    * The 10,000s is closest to 6, so could be 50,000 or 60,000. Because of 1,000s we know it’s 59,878.

    Edit. To the guy who deleted their reply insisting it’s 60878, see the wiki for [parallax error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax?wprov=sfti1#). When dials are close it’s pretty much impossible to reliably tell which side of the mark it’s on using that dial alone. Also, this is the reason why the red tenths dial exists (contrary to popular opinion, it’s not there to trick people into adding an extra digit to their reading).

  12. 59878

    You should always round down because it’s just like a clock face – the dial moves from the number to the next number along.

    A big clue as to why it’s the small number is look at the next dial along. If that’s also a high number, then the original dial should be close to the next number but not quite.

    E.g.

    – the units dial is 8. Therefore the tens dial should be between 80% and 90% of the way from 7 to 8 meaning it should be close to 8 but in fact is a 7.
    – similarly the tens digit being a 7 means the hundreds dial should be between 70% and 80% of the way from 8 to 9.

  13. I make it 60988

    6 x 10000

    0 X 1000

    9 x 100

    8 x 10

    8 x 1

    Added together makes 60988

  14. You can’t read a dial without knowing what the one to the right of it is, that’s why there is a red dial.

    So it’s best to go right to left, starting from the red dial. It’s just past 1 so we know the right hand black dial is just past 8. Therefore the next dial must be nearly at 8 i.e. 7. etc

  15. From experience, I would keep taking pictures of your meter on the day you take the readings. Had one of these in a house we rented, moved out in the June and closed all the accounts etc. British Gas then tried to dump me with a £140 electricity bill on Christmas Eve. The next tenant fucked up reading the meter when they moved in, so British Gas tried to claim the difference from us.

    We were lucky that a) a meter reader had been out three weeks before and they so they could see £130 wasn’t realistic usage and b) I had a picture of the meter on the day we moved out so the meter-reading mistake was self-evident.

    It got sorted, but having the photo evidence was useful and the person on the phone seemed quite keen to be sent it, so I guess it makes their lives easier too.

  16. These meters were meant to be read by a trained expert meter reader from the electricity board. Have they not offered to smarten it up ? Mind you “smart meters” work on 3g which will be phased out so they will have to employ meter readers again.

  22. 5 lots of 10,000
    9 lots of 1,000
    7 lots of 100
    7 lots of 10
    7 lots of 1
    1 lots of 1/10
    The clock isn’t quite at 2 on the smallest dial so I assume we round everything down.

    That to me looks like 59777.1. I’ve never done this before so it’s just a guess

Leave a Reply