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??

[breatheslowly]

The size of your house shouldn't make any difference to the amount of water you use unless you have a mansion with a massive garden that you water.

We pay about £68 per month for 2 adults + child, but I love long showers and DH takes ages in the shower and often has 2 per day due to sport. We also do about 1 load of washing a day. We have a dishwasher which should use less water than washing up by hand.

If you have moved house then there is a risk that the people leaving misread a digit on the water meter before they left - did you read it when you moved in?

[katspaw]

Single-ish, on a water meter, consume circa 60 cubic metres per year (which is about the going rate for my circumstances).

In my area, the water bill is made up of four separate elements:

Fixed and volume related water
Fixed and volume related sewage

Which works out at £27/month

If the government had any balls, everyone would be on a water meter.

[midastouch]

We have a 2 bed terraced house for 2 adults 2 children. Ours is currently £800 a year on a meter. im told by water company more than double what we should be using! Oh blames me with my ocd, but actuallly the dripping taps and shower that he hasnt fixed are using a lot more water than you'd think. I put a large bucket under the shower the other night it had overflowed by the time we got up!! Proved my point!

[specialsubject]

indeed. Why don't you fix the drips?

[Sabriel]

We've just had our water bill. For the period July to Jan we've used 30 cubic metres. Water supply is £55.11 and sewerage is £70.92.

3 adults and 1 child. Washing machine does 5-6 loads a week and we wash-up by hand.

[Mrcrumpswife]

Anyone with an exceptionally high bill should check for silent leaks in the toilet. On Xmas eve we received our 6 monthly bill which was just under a 1000.00. I nearly had a panic attack. It turns out our toilet cistern was constantly filling 24 hours a day and instead of the loo leaking out, it drained straight into the pan and out of the natural over flow without us noticing anything We were loosing the equivalent of 324, 2 litre bottles of coke every 24 hours.

All we had to do was put food colouring in the cistern and wait 10 mins to see if it filled the pan with coloured water which it did within mins.

We are now filling in forms to try and get a leakage allowance on our bill so fingers crossed or i will be paying a 200.00 a month direct debit which is not going to happen unless we starve.

[Bakingnovice]

My neighbours are on a low fixed tariff as they are tax credits. They say it's a very good deal. We aren't eligible but other might be?

Water costs are so high at the moment. We pay £52 month.

[ToeCap]

I am on a meter and pay £75.30 per month direct deb.

[zumbaholic]

Hmm sounds v v high. Im unmetered in south west and pay £42 a month, although judging by the interactive thing i just did on wessex water website i use about a 1/4 of average users so im v tempted to go on a meter...

[zumbaholic]

mrcrumpswife- how does that work? i thought if you put something in the citern-eg those blue looblock things then it automatically disperses into the toilet or do you mean without actaully flushing? confused!

[Mrcrumpswife]

Yes, no flushing, just the leak draining into the pan from the cistern. It wouldnt change colour without flushing in a normal working loo.

[Yellowbutterfly1]

Thames water and I’m paying £30. Month on a meter.
It really seems to have gone up a lot over the last couple of years and according to my bills the amount of water we use for 4 of us makes us look like really dirty so and so’s. (Promise we aren’t)