Restricted water supply

How much water do you receive?

• Water is provided to you as “units” and at the same rate as our current water charges.
• 1 water unit = 1,000 litres/24hrs (1,000 litres of water = 1m³ =  around 100 buckets).
• You receive a fixed daily allowance delivered to your private holding tank over a 24-hour period via a restrictor installed and maintained by us.

Restricted supplies in urban townships

How does a restricted supply work?

• You must have a tank and a pump installed to ensure you have the minimum water storage required in your area (this information is available in LIMs and PIMs.).
• We recommend installing a tank that is large enough to hold at least three days' water storage. The more on-site storage you have the better off you will be when the scheme is down for periods of time and the quicker your system will recover.
• Restricted connections have a restrictor at the point of supply installed and maintained by the Council (see figure 1 and 2 below). Pipe sections in blue are owned and maintained by the Council, pipe sections in pink are the components owned by the property owner and it is their responsibility to install and maintain.

Fig. 1: connection at the boundary	Fig. 2: connection inside the boundary (rural areas)

Your responsibility

The point of supply is the point after which responsibility for ownership, maintenance and repair passes from the council to you.

• Monitoring the water level in your tank is your responsibility. If you use more water than your allocated amount and your tank isn’t large enough, your tank could run out of water.
• If you use more water than your allocated amount and your tank isn’t large enough, your tank may run out of water. If this happens, you may want to wait until the tank slowly refills. In more urgent cases you will need to pay for a private company to fill your tank.
• Do not allow any other party to use your point of supply unless this is approved by the council and keep the area around your equipment free from obstruction.
• Do not tamper with the restrictor as it is an offence under the Council’s bylaw  [PDF, 217 KB] and you may be charged for repairs or replacement, and could be prosecuted.

Please check with www.beforeudig.co.nz (0800 248-344, contactus@beforeudig.co.nz) before undertaking any excavation work, including planting trees, to find out whether any underground pipes may be in the area. If your excavation work causes damage to a council pipe, then you will be liable for the cost of repairs.

Our responsibility

• Restrictors will be supplied, installed and maintained by the council and will remain council property at all times.
• Lateral to water main will be maintained by the owner from the restrictor to the building.
• Some new connections may require a new lateral to water main to be built at owner's costs. The build must comply to our engineering standards and be checked by our maintenance contractor as this pipe will be maintained by Council once live.
• A restrictor can be tested if you have concerns about its accuracy by sending us a request for a restrictor test via email to water.services@selwyn.govt.nz

If you think the restrictor is under-delivering water

• ​If you think there may be a problem with the accuracy of your restrictor – i.e. you don’t think it’s delivering the amount of water you are paying for - you can have it tested by sending an email to water.services@selwyn.govt.nz (provided three months has elapsed since any previous test) giving us the exact location of the restrictor you want tested by our contractor.
• If the restrictor is not working properly, you won’t need to pay the cost of the testing.