Because a 'unit' is a much more useable measure for that much volume. Much easier to look at a bill and see "oh, I used 3 units this month instead of the usual 1' rather than seeing the volume in thousands of gallons.
Same reason some items are measured/sold by 'hundred weight' or 'tons' vice pounds.
Harry K
I expect that the unit is 100 Cubic Foot. About 1500 gallons. Possible for one person in cool weather.
Most cities have a minimum fee.
Then comes the cost of delivery. If close to a river or lake the cost can be very low. However, take Los Angeles which brings much of their water in from the center of the state. The city of Denver, has a tunnel under the continental divide bringing their Colorado River water in from
100 miles away. Their neighboring city of Aurora came late and the nearby water rights were gone. Their main supply is on the Arkansas river near Leadville. Their portion of the water flows to near the city of Pubelo and then is pumped north over 100 miles. Aurora rate is something over $4 a thousand gallons.Las Vegas gets their water from the Colorado River, same as Denver but they just let it flow to Lake Mead so their cost is much lower than Denver.
I guess I'm not a big fan of dumbing things down for certain types of people.
Our water is measured in cubic metres and I suspect that's true for most of the world (i.e., outside of the United States). There are
1,000 litres per cubic metre.I received my water bill earlier this week. Here's the breakdown:
Days in billing period: 102 days Total consumption: 14 cubic metres Daily consumption: 137 litres/day (36.4 US gallons)
Total charges came to $55.23 and consisted of the following:
Basic meter charge: $34.98 Water: $5.28 Environmental Protection: $10.46 Wastewater Management: $4.60
We are a two-person household and our home is equipped with low-flush toilets, low-flow showerheads, and a water-efficient front load washer and dishwasher (BOSCH). We're not overly cautious in our water use (e.g., during this billing period I power washed our home, back patio and driveway), but neither do we believe in wasting it.
Cheers, Paul
Or acre-feet, or whatever gives you reasonable-sized numbers to feed into your spreadsheet. Does anyone but the U.S. still use gallons?
I think if this were designed for single family homes, it would be better to use an average of 30 units, for example. So one wouldn't have to cut or increase his usage by a whole third to see the number change.
Here in Winchester, Taxachusetts, a unit is a hundred cubic feet (ccf), costing us us around $3.25/ccf at our household usage level of about 10 ccf/month. (The rate escalates from $1.22/ccf to $4.94/ccf as usage increases from 0 to 45 plus ccf per quarterly billing period.)
But, we also pay an egregious "sewer charge" based on water consumption which ends up coming out to be about 10% MORE than what we pay for the water.
That's the result of our town being one of forty communities whose sewage had flowed into Boston Harbor for a couple of hundred years. When the gummint began cleaning up the harbor and installing new sewage treatment/disposal systems about 15 years ago, they started whacking those forty towns real good, and I presume that'll probably never stop in my lifetime.
Our town won't even allow you to install a second water meter for irrigation use only and waive the sewer charge on it. So, I don't treat our lawns to as much water as they really need, 'cause I get just too annoyed when the water bill arrives.
The only way to beat that sewage charge is to drill a well.
Jeff
And unfortunately in many incorporated areas, that is prohibited.
Water catchment and a cistern. In Massachussets, you get easily enough rainfall to not need a well.
Hi Jeff,
For outdoor water use, you might consider some sort of catchment system. When I lived in Toronto, the city was providing residents with rain barrels that could be hooked-up to drain spouts. I don't recall if they were free (most likely there was a nominal charge), but I obtained a couple and collected enough water to keep my gardens in pretty good shape throughout Toronto's hot summers (the lawn had to fend for itself).
With my current home, I built a good size pond with a plastic liner and it collects more than enough runoff to see me through the dry spells (not that there's any shortage of rain here in the Maritimes).
Cheers, Paul
Not so much dumbing down, but ease of reading/billing. My home meter registers hundreds of gallons. Our meters at work read cubic feet. You need less space to print out in hundreds rather than individual cubic feet. Many items I buy are priced by the thousand, but most of these are items that cost pennies and bought in large quantities or we'd be into four to six decimal places.
Oh ye of little faith (And a narrow outlook). There are many units of volume used world wide. The most common, universal and easy to use metrically around much of the world, is litres. US neighbour Canada officially uses litres but still 'thinks' in gallons, but that's Imperial gallons (which are about) 20% larger than US ones. In North America we use so much water that even domestically measuring in gallons is cumbersome. So units such as those mentioned (One unit = 748 gallons etc.) are the norm.
Go back in history to that dim time when primitive computer systems used tape storage, magnetic core memory and single registers of limited capacity. Processing bills for say, a thousand residential customers took hours rather than seconds as it would today. Every reduction in the number of bits manipulated by a computer meant that less expensive hardware could be used, and resulted in signifcant, measurable reductions in expensive and limited processing time.
At the same time, the units used in engineering to calculate resevoir and tank capacity, volume flow in pipes and tubes, etc. all used cubic feet or other units more directly related to cubic feet rather than gallons. So in fact, the historical measure in a given area may well have been cubic feet from the beginning of metered water supply in that area, rather than gallons. In such an area, changing to gallons would be the arbitrary decision.
My usage was 6 units. Water $20.64 Water service charge $9.97 Sewage fee $9.36 Sewage service charge $12.10 Total $52.07
Sewage fees are for the use of the sewer system
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My meter reads down to the gallon. Charged by the thousand. However, there is a little pointed dial that turns about 20 times per gallon. Very handy if you are trying to verify a leak.
It has a little round flat antenna mounted on the metal cover. The meterreader reads the usage while driving by at 30 mph!
I have lived in several North American cities. Some used thousands of gallons and others used hundreds of cubit feet.
Do not how that would work since water is usually/often provided by a public utility. However, water usage during 4-5 months when irrigation use is highly unlikely is used to determine the sewer bill.
The water is provided by a utility not the government. As such it is regulated by a state agency, but the state or the city do not get the money.
I agree, it certainly makes no sense to measure in gallons. In fact, acre-feet is used for large amounts of water. OTOH, it makes no sense to call the units "units." It would be much simpler to use CCF (for 100 cubic feet) as the unit, as apparently do many water utilities.
Hundred weight and tons as well as bushels are simply long used standards for sales, but they currently often make no sense. Why would you measure potatoes in sacks instead of hundred weight and why would you use bushels instead of tons for corn? There is an obvious reason for doing so but it has little meaning to the ordinary consumer.
I would agree, but the units are probably measured to the third decimal place not just whole numbers. I know that CCF on my bill are to the fourth decimal place as is the charge per CCF in dollars.
Here in the wonderful state of Massachusetts, we pay a whopping $13.80 per CCF (or almost 2 cents a gallon) for combined water & sewer despite the fact that water is plentiful and the stuff is treated and dumped in the nearby ocean.
I believe that water is cheaper in the Middle East...
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