In the spotlight Andrew Rees

Can you tell us a little bit about your role at Welsh Water?

I joined Welsh Water four years ago in the metering team, where I was responsible for fitting meters in customer’s homes. I moved into the Cartref team in September 2020 where I’m now a plumber.

Working within the Cartref team, I help customers across the country to become more water efficient by offering help and advice on ways that they can save water in their homes. One of the main elements of my role is to fix leaks within homes, focussing on leaky loos.

Leaky loos can be problematic for customers because if they are leaking, they are simply flushing money right down the drain. Not many people would know this, but a leaky loo can waste around 200 litres of water in a day – sometimes this number is much higher. I have seen over 600 litres/hour wasted through one leaking loo – in half a year the water wasted from this one loo could have filled an Olympic size swimming pool!

What does a normal day look like to you?

A usual day for me starts with liaising with our Customer Resolution Officers who are responsible for arranging leakage appointments for our customers.

In the last year, the Cartref team has started using a new video request system to make arranging appointments even easier for our customers. All a customer needs to do is to send a short clip of the suspected leaks to us, so that we can review the issue remotely before arranging the next steps.

The Customer Resolution Officers and I review the submitted video clips from our system, I can then decide the best plan of action for each visit.

I then head out on the road to these appointments, surveying the leaks and fixing them where possible. If further intervention is needed, I can offer advice and signpost them to other services to make sure that their problem is resolved as quickly as possible.

While I’m at a customer’s property, I can also carry out other leakage detection audits and install free water saving products, such as energy efficient shower heads, or tap aerators to help customers save as much water as they can.

I really enjoy interacting with customers and helping them understand their water usage and how this can affect their bills. Lots of our customers don’t realise quite how much water they are using and how much can be saved with some easy tips and tricks.

Why do you think the work Cartref is doing is so important?

Saving water has never been more important and with the current rise in energy bills, being able to help our customers save where they can is essential. Calling out plumbers can often be a timely and expensive process, especially if you aren’t sure what the issue is, so it’s great to know that I’m able to help customers through the Cartref programme – and that it’s all completely free.

Not only are we helping customers in their homes, but we also want to help businesses, and schools where we can.

I was particularly happy with the results from our visits to schools last summer – in one day I managed to save St Cyres School in Penarth over 2,000 litres/hour by making simple fixes to their loos.

So far, the Cartref team has carried out over 1,000 leakage appointments in homes, and 52 audits at schools and community centres in our operating areas. We’ve also issued over 20,000 easy to install water saving products – and we aren’t stopping here.

Over the next year, we will be opening up our leakage scheme to all customers across the country, so if you would like to find out more, click here.