{"id":107338,"date":"2026-08-20T10:02:27","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T10:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/107338\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T10:02:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T10:02:27","slug":"man-from-ditton-stunned-after-his-south-east-water-meter-says-he-had-300-baths-in-24-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/107338\/","title":{"rendered":"Man from Ditton stunned after his South East Water meter says he had 300 baths in 24 hours"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A man was stunned to discover his water meter had recorded him using enough water in 24 hours to fill 300 baths after his bill soared to \u00a37,000.<\/p>\n

Mick Foy couldn\u2019t believe it when he checked his meter, which said he\u2019d used more than a million litres in under a month.<\/p>\n

\"Mick\"MickMick Foy, of Cedar Close, Ditton, says he cannot see any kind of leak in or around his property<\/p>\n

The first he knew about it was when he got a call in July from South East Water, who told him his bill had spiked to \u00a37,000 after years of consistent bills.<\/p>\n

The 64-year-old – who lives with his wife Debbie in a three-bedroom property in Cedar Close, Ditton – said the company told him the usage was \u201ctotally out of the ordinary”.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cWe have had consistent bills for forever and the spike was just off the scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked the lady on the switchboard when it started, and she said it could be any time in the six months leading up to July.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, ‘well, that\u2019s not very helpful.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mick\"MickMick Foy says the meter has been spinning out of control for weeks<\/p>\n

South East Water froze the bill and promised to send a plumber by August 4, but Mick couldn\u2019t wait, and headed up his drive to take a look at the meter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was spinning around like there\u2019s no tomorrow. It was just going into a complete frenzy,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just been in complete freefall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mick, whose son works for South East Water, took note of the meter reading, and 24 hours later returned to find it had recorded that his property had used 54,000 litres – about 300 baths.<\/p>\n

When South East Water\u2019s plumber failed to show on August 4, Mick says he grew \u201cfrustrated”.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cThere\u2019s nowhere that sort of water could come out of here in a private residence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thinking, a plumber, are you for real? I\u2019m telling you, there\u2019s no water anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then, the construction industry worker says he\u2019s recorded a meter change of 1,212,428 litres between July 24 and August 13 – enough to fill more than 6,700 baths.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cIt didn\u2019t really faze me as much as it did my wife. She lost a bit of sleep the first night, but you can\u2019t do anything about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to wait for the powers that be. But it does faze you a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

South East Water has rescheduled the plumber\u2019s visit for today (August 20), and says a supervisor will oversee the work, but Mick says this isn\u2019t good enough.<\/p>\n

Mick\u2019s MP Helen Grant has contacted South East Water to ask the firm to investigate his concerns and \u201ctreat them with the urgency they deserve”.<\/p>\n

The water company told us it was not able to comment on individual cases but would be very happy to escalate the customer’s concerns internally \u201cas a matter of urgency”.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Mick says he hasn\u2019t spotted any flooding or obvious leak nearby, so is hoping the issue is simply a faulty meter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man was stunned to discover his water meter had recorded him using enough water in 24 hours…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[528,309,1082,307,1118,5,6],"class_list":["post-107338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-environment","tag-kent","tag-maidstone","tag-malling","tag-syndicate","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117127266084977389","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}