Hello all,This is my first post to this

If you are in contact with any of your neighbours, then you need to find out who is your water supplier. A lot here are with ACA and they are/were known to be in serious financial trouble. If you do not have contacts I would get in touch with your comune which will be here somewhere and ask them who covers your area. It may well be they want a large (ish) deposit circa €200 deposit to connect your house and the agent is unsure about dealing with it... 

Water is usually a contract between you and the water supplier, and therefore has to be done in person.  I know that here I can do electricity, gas etc for my clients, but not water which requires the presence of the owner at the water office.   If there is no one who has the Power of Attorney to act on your behalf, it may have to wait till you are here in Italy.   It does vary from place to place however.  I would start at the comune see what they say.

Modicasa jogged my mind on this, yes that was the very thing we had to do, go to the office in person. A bit easier for us as the water was on and it was a case of the previous owner having to get her account closed AFTER we opened our account. Amazingly lucky as she was the person in front of us in the queue and the guy still had her paper else we would have had to pay for re-connection according to him. Not too sure about Chieti, but most here in Teramo and those in Pescara are ACA. The other problem with them is the lack of offices other than the big towns and even then they are only open 1-2 days a week for a few hours. Try an email to the comune, most do not use email or reply, but ours has always done so. Once you know who supplies the area (or better still the house) look for their web site to find the nearest office. If it's ACA, I've never yet found an email for them and as Modicasa has said you will in any case need to go in to see them and sign lots of forms. I do not know what the current situation with ACA is, but I know following their troubles there was talk of our Comune helping out with finance and I was told at the time is we have an external leak to report it to the Comune and not ACA any longer. 

Seems that Dogliola is served by SASI spa  - website for connections is www.sasispa.it/allacciamento 

Thanks so much for your enormously helpful answers. Now I have a much better idea of the steps involved and who to contact, not to mention a checklist of the required documentation!  Fortunately for me, a friend has offered to take me to the SASI spa office and will help me get signed up.I see from the SASI spa news on their website that the area is plagued by frequent  service suspensions. Good to know. I'll add a jumbo bottle of drinking water to my lista della spesa.Again, thanks so much for your time and expertise!Mary