The price of metered water!!

One of my offspring lives in the SW, so I pinged them to see what their water bill was, knowing it's somewhat high. Two people working from home...

Water: £3:34 Sewerage: £1:91 Annual fixed charge: £55:15

Six month bill: £400

I do.

I enjoy a bath, and I have it absolutely brim full (blu tack over the overflow) with regular hot top ups. I probably use more than most.

Although I do have an efficient way of reducing the amount I need to put in to fill it, by being a fat ####.

now you're just being silly

It's 2 years in my case IIRC. After my first year, the annual metered water/sewer bill is about half the unmetered (£200 vs £450). But I don't use much water on the garden, and most of the time it's just me in the house.

The Natural Philosopher explained on 28/07/2021 :

So you are the reason we are all having to pay more and have meters..

R D S expressed precisely :

Pressure washing uses surprisingly little water.

Jeff Layman has brought this to us :

A similar result here, when we switched several years ago.

It happens that tim... formulated :

We (two) are around £300 per year, compared to near £600 unmetered.

Agreed. When used with a rotating head to clean paving, my Bosch used about 300l/hour.

No, that's the people with solar panels on their rooves and windmills on their estates

As a household of 5, we are probably better off sticking with an unmetered supply. At some point I will get around to fitting my own meter (I have already bought it) inside the house, to see how much we actually use. As the kids leave home, the situation may change.

So I have learned to my surprise.

You are wasting obscene amounts of water in a well-known 'dry' area, just to keep irrelevent plants and grass alive. Get Real.

Is it possible to destroy water (other than by means of some new fission technique)?

I'd have said that the water charges were a carriage charge. It all gets back to nature in the end.

The annual fixed charge would be £33.71 if they could deal with their own surface water (gutter) drainage and the sewage rate would also drop to 2.7838/m3

They have given you the wrong figures. Water rate is £1.9338/m3 while sewage rate is £3.2938. The latter is always higher than for the actual supply of water, but if they use a lot of water on their garden they should be able to negotiate a discount on sewage, or possibly fit a meter to the garden tap to measure actual outside usage.

Their 6 month bill is £25.07 standing charge, £375 for water and sewage at a combined rate of £5.25/m3. I cannot quickly see the percentage factor used to assess how much supplied water ends up back in the foul sewer (Southern Water assume 92.5%) so I have left it at 100%.

Anyway £373/£5.25 is 71.4 cu metres for 6 months which is many times more than my single person usage, not just about double.

Are they sure that their house gutters are connected to SWW's pipes ?. Investing in a storage tank might be worthwhile. This would reduce their annual bill by about £80 from what I can see.

Although if you have fitted one of those daft "shower baths" then it will take far more hot water that a typical domestic HWCyl could supply.

That is pretty close to my usage too.

The water charges also include sewage charges which assumes that a percentage of the supplied water (typically 92.5%) goes back in the foul sewer. Turnip is not on mains sewage so he only pays for water.

It might get back to nature but to come out of your tap (on demand) requires collection, treatment and distribution, fixing leaks etc. Treatment and distribution uses a lot of electricity too, so it's a double hit for people, (and leaks) who waste water

It also needs 'cleaning' to ensure it's fit to drink