My water bill is so high!! any help?

[MrsJLS85]

I just got a letter through from my water supplier, and they are raising my monthly direct debit from £60 to £95/month!! Is it just me or is that ridiculously high?
It is just 2 adults and one child in the house, and we live in a 3 bed, 3 bath, semi. Its a new build with all new appliances, so I assume everything is energy efficient as they come. DH and I take daily showers, and DC takes a bath every second day. I run the dish washer every second day, and do maybe 2-3 loads of laundry every week. To me this sounds normal, but maybe its not? Does anyone have any suggestions of how I can reduce this??

It sounds normal to me too.

Even if the appliances arent the most water efficient they are still using less water than washing up does by hand.

Is there a leak?

When we had a meter for a 3 bed house with d/w etc it was £10 per month and £13 per month when dh decided the car needed washing daily.

Install a water meter. Never looked back :)

That's ridiculously high! I was having this converstaion with friends recently and on comparing water bills I realised that mine was comparatively high. There are 4 of us (2 adults and 2 kids), husband and I shower every day, kids bath every day (but only one bath-ful of water is run. Dish-washer goes on 5-6 times a week and washing machine about 4-5 times. Our direct debit is £43 a month. As I say, this was deemed extremely expensive by some of my friends who appear to be paying much lower! So yours is way too high!!!

New builds usually come with a meter though, our relatives came with a water butt too. It helps them meet green targets so he says.

Agreed, your bill seems massively high. We're 2 adults, 2 kids, dishwasher on daily, 4-5 loads of washing a week and pay about £20 per month with Veolia I think

I think the way to test is to turn all the water off and look at the meter, if it's still going round then you have a leak.

Or they have plumbed two houses on to one meter!

That's enormous! I run the dishwasher and the washing machine every day - 3 showers a day too.

20 a month (no meter)

Check for a leak. Make sure no water is running in the house go out to the meter and see if it's still turning, if it is you might have a leak.

That is definitely too high! Our water useage sounds just about the same as yours except we do about 8 or 9 loads of washing a week. Our direct debit is £35 a month and we are in credit.

Depends where you live, although it does seem high - with South West Water we were paying £54 a month on a meter for 2 bed house with 2 kids, when we moved and had another kids it now it works out cheaper to be on rates, about £650 per year (paying £65 pcm over 10 months of the year) for Band B.

We do about 8-10 loads of washing a week, 2 baths for kids per week (shared) and 2 adults showering daily. Also dishwasher at least once a day, often twice. And your bill is even higher than that!

South West Water is the highest charges in the UK I think, certainly way more than some of you lot - I am seriously jealous of the £20 a month bills some of you have!

If you find your water board website, have a look to see if there is a calculator for "would I be better on a meter". Then type in your usage, and see what the bill comes out to.
We live up north, and 4 of us, DH 2 showers a day, me 1 shower a day, kids a bath every other day, dishwasher on most days, washing machine 4 loads a week, is less than £20.

Unless you live somewhere that water is horribly expensive, it sounds like something is wrong.

Agree with the comment above. Shut off EVERY tap, read the meter, and then read it again 30 mins later WITHOUT USING ANY WATER. Try to do it on a day when the neighbours are in! If the reading increases, there is a problem, and you need to ring them to get it sorted. They should also back date the problem for a while.

Hope it gets sorted soon. It sounds very expensive.

Sounds like a leak to me. If they are changing your Direct Debit it sounds like you are already on a meter? We are in a 4 bed house, 3 toilets, 2 showers daily for me & DH, showers 3 / 4 times a week for DD & DS, dishwasher and washing machine every day, and our payments are £49 per month.

Find out where your meter is (if you're not sure the water company should be able to tell you), do a reading, wait 7 days, write down what you are using each day, do another reading after 7 days, tell your water company the results. See whether they think it makes sense or not. If not, ask them to check for leaks.

and I agree with nextphase's advice too!

Thanks everyone for the advice!! Will definitely do all of your suggestions, and look into this right away.

Mrs jls did you find out if there was a leak?

Get a meter

£23 per month 3 bed semi with 2 long shower loving teens !!

Woweie! I thought I was having money problems , we pay £30 pm 4 bed 1bath downstairs loo dishwasher on daily as is the washing machine usually and 3 kids , we have baths no shower in the house so 3 bath tubs daily.

We are on a meter. It's depressing.

My Thames Water meter bill was £20 a month - and they charge £1.15 a unit which is pretty high. For about the same usage as the OP - so yes, there is a leak or a problem.

unless you are taking massive 20 minute showers of course. :-)

Hi,

We also just received a massive water from Essex & Suffolk. We moved to the UK in August and our bill was £352! The usage on the bill is five times higher than what we were using in Lithuania. Not the price, the usage. So the water man came out and went down to the meter and had me turn the water off and on. He said it didn't budge while I had the water off, so no leak. He said the meter was read two days after we moved in. He gave me the figure of the last reading and told me we'd already used a ton of water since then -- I should have written it all down but that basically we had already used 100 liters since then (a short period of time, again I should have written it all down, dh's not going to be happy that I didn't). Anyway, he finished off by saying we should all be taking showers.

We are two adults and two children in a two-bed flat. We all shower/bathe once every two days. The girls like their baths but they keep them fairly shallow and then they fill up when I wash their hair. I do tend to keep the shower going during this process because every time I switch on/off the water takes several seconds to heat up and goes from scalding to freezing then normal, so it's a royal pain to keep switching it off to lather up their hair and rinse it. We did switch to a whole shampoo/conditioning thing that I wasn't doing with them before so it does take a bit more water for rinsing. Still, I can't understand how our usage would be that much more here than there!
I probably do 5 washings/week. I cook a lot so do a lot of dishes.

Any insight?

a ton of water is 1000 litres, which is a cubic metre, which is the unit that the water companies use. E and S charge £1.32 for that, and then another 64p for the sewage, so let's say £2 a unit.

That bill sounds ridiculous. Do your own test for a couple of hours - not a few minutes. It really sounds like there is a leak.

a power shower uses lots of water - depending on the power and the length of time, it can use more than a bath. As your girls are having both at once, that will use lots of water. Also handwashing lots of dishes uses more water and power than a dishwasher.

However I still don't believe you are using that much.

Thank you! We talked to Essex & Suffolk and they said right away, before we even said anything, that it was way too much. But then the water man came and he acted like it was no big deal and just told me to take showers! I told him it was 5 time more consumtpion than we had previously had and that our habits hadn't changed but he just shrugged and kept saying to take showers.

£50 a month for in and out

Would like a meter but when they water board came round they couldn't find where my water supply comes from

Must contact them again

Golly! I am paying £80 per month on water rates. There are 4 of us in the house so we use a lot of water but from reading these posts, I may be better off with a meter.

It depends if you are able of changing behaviour eg pil have one and use loads of water, no dishwasher, washing machine always set to quickwash, long showers.

So there bill stayed roughly the same if not more.

However, I use all the Eco cycles, have a dishwasher and have tap inserts and a shower insert so our bill on a meter was £13 a month.