Water useage for a year - just got our bill FAQ

Here 2 people 71 m^3 last year, though we're hardly frugal (eg one bath and one shower per day though no lawn watering).

nib

At present single user @ 46m3/year. There is an automatic drip system for potted plants and window boxes that is only used in the hotter months. No lawn watering - it goes very brown during the summer months. I'm not too frugal with water.

Essex and Suffolk water suggest

I had a meter installed at my flat in March. Nobody lived there until June, since when it has had one occupant. And the meter says he has used 1,000 m3. Hmm, I think not. So do they, but they haven't got around to investigating it yet. This is Affinity Water.

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About 30m3/year here, just me - dishwasher saves a bit, as does the water butt for the garden.

I'd guess a bath a day uses about 20m3 of that . . .

We were paying about £24 / mth on a meter. We get a couple of ( small) deductions - rain water drainage and road drainage ( our road has no drains and I successfully argued for it to be removed - more on principle than for the amount). Two people, we don’t make any special attempts to be frugal. We don’t water lawns but do use a hose on the veg plot etc if the water butt is dry etc.

That said, latest bill was a shock. Usage increased last year and bill now £44. A quick look for leaks and I found one of the toilets had a ‘dribble’ down the back of the pan. Just perceptible- which is why we’d not noticed it. Changed the washer on the flush valve ( it is one of those two button one) and checked for debris a the valve lip, end of dribble.

Hopefully, the bill will be back down next year.

When we bought the house in 1997, it didn’t have a meter. As I recall we were paying £500 / year initially.

The meter reduced it dramatically. £44 is on of the highest amounts - even when the 3 daughters still lived at home.

It soon mounts up Shower 35l Washing machine 50 to 75l (more if you use an extra rinse) Toilet 3 to 6l Dishwasher 6l

My water bill was 2.3x higher late last year/early this year. The amount was a bit of a shock until I read the accompanying letter.

Previously the water supply and sewerage were from two different companies. The bill is now combined.

For my 46m3/year usage I'm paying around £330/year (combined water supply and sewerage)

I think this about water butts is a bit of a myth, personally. We've got around 1000 litres of water butt capacity. Well, that's one whole cubic metre. Pouring that by hand onto the garden takes quite a while, so how much do we save during a year? Two, three m3? Hardly worth it. A more compelling argument might be that it's rainwater and so more chemical-free.

Ours is combined.

Thinking back, there may have been some rebate in the £24 bill. Our Water company had some ‘issues’ and were forced to reduce prices / pay customers money. It wasn’t a huge sum, at least not per month.

Prior to that we were certainly paying under £30- at least since off spring moved out.

Acid rain? Around my way the rain seems to drag a lot of pollutants and dust out of the atmosphere requiring the car to be washed after every little shower. Not really, I tend to only wash the car when it gets dirty enough to leave a thick layer of dirt on my clothes when I brush past the bodywork :)

Yes, that's the point. The azalea family like acid soil and prefer to be watered with dilute carbonic acid.

Blimey! Try living in the SW!

Water…£2.07/cu.m with SC £44.72pa

Sewerage…£3.32/cu.m with SC £60.99pa

Our last six-monthly bill for 58cu.m was over £250.

And we have dual-flush loos and 8 litres/min restrictors on the showers. And there’s no grass or veg plot to water in summer. Plus three 100-litre water butts.

l That was one of the drivers for us to install water butts, we have a fruit cage full of Blueberry bushes and they don’t thrive on mains water. Have about 2000L of storage arranged so that when full they overflow into a wildlife pond which again it isn’t ideal to top up with mains water,the pond when full overflows onto the vegetable garden. 700L is a tank the rest butts. We did not plan on getting that many butts but took advantage of a subsidised scheme from a water company some years ago and glitch in the system meant even though we only paid for one five arrived over a six week period and the delivery contractor had no mechanism in place to pick them up so said keep them. ISTR the sponsoring company is the one that would handle our waste if we had drains but we don’t. Soakaways for the roof and septic tank for the household wastewater.

No meter so there is no financial saving at least not to us , occasionally we pass the hose over the fence to our elderly neighbour when her garden gets really dry. But that is as much that I can’t just stand and watch as she struggles with an ancient kinked and leaky hose when ours in good working order can be easily run out. GH

Can't speak for the "average" ;-}

but here, on my own, it has been less than 25m3 p.a. in each of the last three years.

It's a bit of a faff, but I read our water meter once a month, mainly to identify an impending leak.

We did have a major leak when they installed the meter (due to the builders next door being cowboys) but they didn't charge us for that. The meter was literally spinning round.

I have a big garden and a pond, and I dont pay sewage charges. So I decided against a water meter.

Our mains water was desperately slow so I had a meter installed 3 years ago, When the molers dug their interception pits they filled with water, so the ancient galvanised water pipe was leaking as well as being clogged with rust. I should have twigged something was up, as when I tested the well the water was hard, our mains water comes from chalk aquifers and the soil here is sandy.

Anyway since then our water use is less than 30m3/ annum. We wash up using about 6 litres, half the toilet flushes are with grey water and unless I go to work for a day tend to bath every other day. Garden is watered from the butt, hose never used.

Ours is on a neighbour’s drive*. While we are on very good terms, I’d feel I was intruding to read the meter that often.

I’m assuming the dribble is the problem. There is no other sign of a problem and we haven’t changed our usage.

That said, I was shocked such a small trickle could make a difference. At first, I wasn’t sure there was a leak - it was only when I squirted loo cleaner against the back of the bowl it was obvious. Then, it would run

On the plus side, we are in a ‘pocket’ / area which, despite being in Kent, comes under a different water company ( no idea how / why). We usually escape hose pipe bans Kent sees. How that works I have no idea. I can’t believe our water comes from Hampshire.

While we rarely use a hose in the garden, I do need to wash the Motorhome now and then and use a hose to clean the water tanks / put enough in to use enroute ( you don’t generally travel with a full tank - ours holds 140 litres, that would be a lot of unnecessary weight. 30 litres is enough, otherwise Senior Management would have to leave her shoes at home 😏