psmv6: More water matters

Some thoughts arising from Gemini's (logged in) response to a query about a water outage yesterday (Wednesday), noticed at reference 1. I had supplied him with the first part of our postcode, KT19.

I now know that Epsom is covered by three such postcode area, KT17, KT18 and KT19, clockwise from the east. Rather bigger areas than I had realised. The map above is lifted from reference 2.

Sutton and East Surrey Water

Gemini explained that while Thames Water have the whole of waste water, they do not have the whole of water supply, with a large chunk being taken out by Sutton and East Surrey Water (SES). Mrs. Thatcher in her drive to privatise everything in sight, did not appear to see the need to tidy the map up - although I believe it is largely true that our water companies do both supply and waste and that their areas are broadly in line with the major river catchment areas.

The history of this particular exception is laid out at reference 4, while the not very satisfactory map above is very like a simpler one to be found at reference 3.

It rather looks as if KT19 is entirely within the Thames Water domain, although it is hard to be sure from the maps above. But if it is the case, Gemini chose not to work this out and then to confine his reply to Thames Water. Although one might also argue that the average questioner, including this one, would be pretty vague about the coverage of KT19, and that it was better to explain.

From a supplementary, I learn that I had got this fairly wrong. KT19 is not all Thames Water supply. And, as well as SES, we have Affinity Water of reference 5 with the map above.

Gemini also offers reference 6, but the trouble with that, for present purposes, is that it only deals with complete postcodes. It also appears to include a Cloudfare gadget to block the likes of Gemini.

While reference 7 makes clear the supply situation in general terms, it does not provide detailed maps.

Gemini's take on Affinity Water is snapped above.

So all things considered, perhaps Gemini was right to cover the two suppliers he did, although one might argue that for completeness, a mention for Affinity would have been still better.

Incidents

For Thames Water, Gemini had pointed me at reference 8. We got our water back yesterday afternoon, but the suggestion here is that that have not quite finished this morning.

My present point being that Gemini did not chose to look at this site for himself and work out that the KT19 incident that Thames Water was reporting was very likely the one that I was talking about.

I thought Gemini handled this one rather well.

Conclusions

I now think that Gemini had done better than I had at first thought. It is perhaps unreasonable to expect a general purpose tool like Gemini to provide instant answers to every question you can think of, particularly questions which are apt to unfold as the answers unfold.

Then there is the basic model of sending Gemini away to be trained on the data out there, and then getting him to answer questions about that data when he gets back. A model which does not sit very comfortably with more or less live feeds.

I also associate to the large sums of money which you can pay for feeds from the likes of Reuters and Bloomberg. Also to the fact that information might be in the public domain, perhaps out there on the Internet, but it takes time and effort to collect it up and apply to the matter in hand.

And I dare say there are specialist mapping outfits out there that put lots of maps together, that put lots of information on top of those maps. Gmaps squared as it were. Lots of layers. I remember that I once came across one that specialised in mapping more or less forgotten, underground hazards to new construction. Things like old bottle mines. On which, by way of example, Bing turns up reference 9.

But I did not get into any of this with Gemini.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/08/washing-line-middle-game.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KT_postcode_area.

Reference 3: https://www.seswater.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SES_Water.

Reference 5: https://www.affinitywater.co.uk/oursupplyarea.

Reference 6: https://www.water.org.uk/customers/find-your-supplier.

Reference 7: https://www.ccw.org.uk/advice-and-support/households/water-companies/.

Reference 8: https://www.thameswater.co.uk/network-latest.

Reference 9: https://buddlepit.co.uk/mine-explorer/Database/MineDetails.html?id=t57B1k3zlEFM59VLkaApMQ==.

Reference 10: https://monstercleaning.com/end-of-tenancy-cleaning-ewell/. One of Gemini's sources of information.