Just got our first daily water use info for our water meter

[Motnight]

It's 1180 litres. I am gobsmacked.

3 bedroomed house. 2 of us living here permanently, occasional visits from a 3rd person! Both working mostly at home. Around 10 loads of washing a week, dishwasher used once a day. 2 showers and 1 bath a day (bath is deep). Bath is taken by husband who has a life long illness which leaves him in lots of physical pain, which is helped by a bath.

Is this normal? The useful info provided says that a typical 2 person household should use around 270 metres a day. Do we have a leak or are we just using appalling amounts of water? If the latter, any tips on reducing this? Thankyou.

10 loads of washing for 2/3 people seems excessive for a start.

10 loads of washing is a lot. We have 5 of us at home and we average 5 loads a week.

The baths. Daily baths will slaughter your water!

10 loads of washing? For two people??

Are your bills in litres or metres cubed? No decimal places missing? Definitely measured per day and not per week?

Yes. What on earth are you washing that it takes 10 loads per week?

that's a lot of washing and baths. I understand the need for the latter, can you cut down on the former? I don't do that much for four people.

If you have a health condition you can apply to have discounted bills , it's capped per day so you can use as much as needed.

10 loads of washing seems ALOT !
I have young children , school uniforms, underwear,pyjamas , after school clothes , club kits etc.

Hubby with messy job and I do max 2 / 3 loads a week. ( 3 is if I'm doing the bedding/towels ). I have a 10kg washing machine if that makes much difference

That's a lot of washing, there's 2 of us and we do 3-4 a week.

10 loads of washing?! How? I think that should be your starting point. I think I do 3/4 loads a fortnight for 1 person. The 3rd/4th load is bedding/ towels. I just can't imagine doing 10 loads a week.

Cut down on the washing if you can. That's a lot. And keep the showers short.

I don't think you have a leak. Your water usage is ridiculously high.

Unless there is some crucial information you're not giving, I struggle to see how you'd need 10 loads of laundry a week and 2 showers a day. One is perfectly sufficient.

Dishwashers are usually quite efficient, are you only running it when it's actually full though? Or do you just do one a day regardless?

The baths will also use up a lot of that daily total. Does it need to be so deep?

Why is one person having both a bath and a shower daily?

And 10 loads of washing for 2 people is a huge amount. There are 5 of us here (2 adults, 3 teenagers) and I do about 4 or 5 a week.

Ah see also the 2 showers are for one person? Just have 1 shower.

10 a week, 1 do 1 and theres 2 of us here.

altho I have done none for over a month as the washing machine is broken, been washing the undies in the bath, its mostly undies.

Why two showers per day? It's also not great for your hair and skin to be washed so much!

I do 1 a week, not 1 do 1

10 loads of washing is the outlier - we are a 2 person in term time and rarely do more than 2 loads a week and dishwasher is on perhaps 5 times a day, not everyday. He wfh, I work pt elsewhere

Well, you are using a lot of water.
Why so much washing? We are a family of 4 and I don’t do that much washing and that’s with school uniforms and two sets of work uniforms.

I think the average usage figures quoted by the water companies are aspirational rather than factual.

Our usage is apparently off the scale high too, but I've got teenagers who barely know what the words shower and clean clothes mean

Do we have a leak
If you turn off all taps etc - your water meter should not show any throughput. Ours is an old fashioned mechanical one so when we turn everything off we can see the needle stops moving.

Dishwasher daily seems a lot.

As there is a medical reason for the baths, you'll have tostick with that, but if there's only two if you, why two showers on top of that?

10 loads of washing is a huge amount!

Then there are the smaller things which add up - leaving a tap running (even when cleaning teeth), the size of your lavatory flush (and whether you actually need to flush if it's only a wee), re-using water from the bath (to water plants, fir example)

bath = 100 litres
shower (5 minute power shower) = 75 litres x 2 = 150 litres
washing machine = 50 litres x 2 = 100 litres
dishwasher = 10 litres

360 litres for starters.

Leave the tap running when you're brushing your teeth? 10 litres. Every time you flush the loo? 6 litres.

And so on.

3 bed house, 3 people, 3 showers per day, 1 dishwasher run per day and our daily usage was 360 litres per day which we thought was high! 1180 is ridiculous. We do about 4-5 loads of washing a week, 10 is crazy.

When DP was alive, we did 3-4 loads of washing a week and ran the dishwasher maybe 3 x pw. (Mind you, it would have been more if I wasn't a genius at loading it to get the absolute max amount of stuff in).

I can understand your DH preferring a bath, but could you cut that down to his bath and you shower just once a day? Bath + shower, or 2 showers for one person, seems excessive to me.

Having said that, I thought my water use might reduce after DP died, but it doesn't seem to have made much difference there being just one person in the house.