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.

2 adults here
1 bath a week
13 showers a week
3-4 loads of washing
No dishwasher so 1-2 washing up bowls a day

@chesirecat99

The water company will tell you to do the checks I linked to earlier before they investigate further, *@Motnight*, so you might as well do them before you call.

I hope you have separate water/plumbing insurance. If the leak is underground on your property, usually you will be responsible for any repairs. It can cost tens of thousands, especially if the leak is under a drive. Home buildings insurance doesn't usually cover underground leaks caused by wear and tear. If you live in an older property, there is a good chance that the water supply pipes need replacing due to age if there is a leak.

Coincidentally I recently got a letter about a special offer for plumbing /pipe insurance. I’d just assumed home insurance would cover a burst pipe but sounds as though that is not the case

I’ve looked into plumbing and drains insurance in the past and haven’t found anyone who’ll cover us. We live in a ground floor maisonette with a single pipe that splits off to upstairs and companies don’t seem to want to cover flats.

I like baths not showers so I bought a bath which is shorter to use less water and only have one every other day

Whenever there’s a discussion on washing I fail to see how the responses reconcile with the how often do you wash your towels/bedding/jeans discussions!

A family of 4 doing 3-4 loads a week is either wearing clothes multiple times or seriously over loading their machine.

I’d check for a leak. Mine is 450l on average a day which I was astounded with. I do drink a lot of tea so maybe a lot of toilet flushing.

Glad they're sending someone out Op as that's a lot of water!

How do you check your water consumption. Is it different in Scotland?

@Perime do you have a meter? If your meter is accessible you can check the reading. Your bills should also say the usage on them as if you are metered you are obviously paying per unit.

Yes that seems high, but 10 loads of laundry is a lot for 2 people. We are a 2 person household and do 3 or sometimes 4 loads a week. Also why have a bath AND shower in one day? Surely a bath is sufficient on its own? Do you fill the kettle for one drink? etc etc.You should easily be able to cut down your water usage.

Coming back to update this.

After contacting Thames Water the day I started this thread they have finally done their second engineer visit. The first visit confirmed no obvious leaks from our side. They have just confirmed that we share a water supply with our next door neighbours. There are 4 people in the house next door. So our water meter is shared obviously.

Not yet sure what happens next, or indeed why Thames Water didn't already have a record of this. It is pretty obvious, if you know what to look out for, ie one mains tap between 2 houses.

Thames Water have been really poor. Cancelled visits, visits without any notice. Different departments phoning me to say that I was using a lot of water and would I like some advice.

I will keep this thread updated!

Ask to go back on rates or they find some way of metering your sole supply. Can they move it?

Thames Water have a rep for being shit. Good luck resolving this. Keep on at them and consider going to Ofwat if it's not quickly sorted. Make sure you get a refund too.

And following posts on this thread we have cut down by about 20% on dishwasher use and also washing machine use (helped by the fact that we bought a washing machine with a bigger drum - our old washing machine actually had a smaller drum than average).

Thanks, that's really helpful re Ofwat.

Check your outside meter to see if it’s constantly ticking / moving. They said if it is, you have a leak

Don’t you have to rinse off pots, pans and crockery before putting them in the dish washer though?

No you don’t.

I just scrape any leftovers into the food waste with an old spatula and bung it all in the dishwasher.

Some things can’t go in the dishwasher but most things go in there and no pre-rinsing.

Interesting. I’ve always been against them because I thought that they used a lot of water and that you had to rinse everything first or things came out still dirty ( they must have improved since I was a teenager working in hotel kitchens).

Average washing machine only uses about 50 litres. Showers can use huge amounts. Some produce 20 litres a minute,so a ten minute shower would use more than a deep bath (150 litres). A normal ,shallow washing-not -luxuriating bath would only be around 50 litres and you can recycle the water to flush the loo ! I would get a jug and run the shower into it to see how much is being used in a minute. A toilet flush could be anything between 3 litres for a half flush on a modern toilet to 10 litres on an older one. Dishwasher about 15 litres. Leaving tap running while you wash hands,brush teeth,clean vegetables or clean the shower or bath, etc is around 5 litres a minute, which can add up to a lot ,particularly if you are in the house all day and do a lot of food prep.

I promised I would update this when Thames Water finally made a decision and we have just received one!

Last month a Thames Water engineer arrived to put in a water meter for next door in our loft. They couldn't understand why we didn't want this. They didn't believe that we didn't have our own water tank, we told them last year that our water pipes (which are in the loft) provide water directly from outside. There is a water pipe in our loft which goes next door and this is what provides our neighbours with water. All this was agreed with a previous engineer last year who had visited. My husband ended up having to take photos for this last engineer of the loft and the downstairs cupboard to show him that there was indeed no water tank in our house. The engineer left muttering to himself.

Today we have received a bill for this coming year and our payments are reduced to £25 a month which we are happy with. The bill says "As we can’t fit a water meter at your property, we work out your bill using our Assessed
Household Charge (AHC). This is based on the typical amount of water used by
customers with a similar number of bedrooms to you". So finally we have a result!

I can not over state how hopeless Thames Water customer service has been in general. We were threatened with them digging up our front garden with us having to pay for this to look for leaks at one point, had several calls telling us that they could give us hints and tips on how to save water, had 3 separate engineers turn up at various times. Whenever we contacted them we were told our customer records were incomplete and the person we were speaking to had no idea about what was happening.

Congratulations on getting such a good outcome!

I am a little confused about what it means with you not having a water tank, and getting a meter for next door. I've reread your posts but still can't see why that matters.

All the water comes in via an outside pipe, goes via our pipes into the loft and then either into a pipe on the left (neighbour) or a pipe on the right (ours) before coming back down to whichever house is using it. The Thames Water engineer were adamant that they could put a water meter in the loft that would only measure what went through to next door. We said no as a) we didn't believe it and b) didn't want the hassle of anyone else trudging up to our loft to take a reading that wasn't even for us!

It'll be the bath doing you in. You'd be amazed how much water a bath, especially a deep one, can guzzle.

And 10 loads of washing a week is a LOT. I'm in a family of 4 and only run 3 or 4 loads a week.

You need to read my update!

I'm glad you have updated the thread and you've finally sorted it out.

I have found this water use calculator from Anglian Water fairly reliable.
www.anglianwater.co.uk/help-and-advice/save-water/water-usage-calculator
If you put the details from your original post into it, the result says your usage should be around 205 litres per person per day. As your feed pipe supplies the two of you and the four next door, then for 6 people you can easily see where the 1180 litres per day came from.

A few years back my water company fitted a transponder to the front of my water meter which means they can read the meter from the street outside ( i saw them do it once and they don't even get out of their van). This would mean they could fit two meters in your loft - one for you and one for next door - and never have to access your loft to read them. I would also guess that the pipe that goes through to your neighbour's is still a single pipe as it enters their loft, so they could fit their meter in their loft.

As an aside, the water supply for my house comes up through the floor and immediately splits into two - one pipe supplies downstairs and the other goes upstairs. My water meter is fitted before the split, but my neighbour's is attached to the downstairs pipe only, so the water they use upstairs is free! The water company seems to have not noticed anything unusual about their low usage!