Increased water usage - help

[ClamSpaghetti]

We moved house in February. We had a smart meter for water in our old house and our new one. We have moved with all the same appliances - same washing machine, same dishwasher. The only thing that's changed is in our OLD house we had a huge bath that I regularly used on top of my normal showers. In the new house we don't have a bath.

Our water bill has always been quite high for 4 of us, about £50pm. But this was with baths, paddling pool, slip n slide, kids regularly playing with the hose. We consistently for the last three years have used roughly the same cubic metres of water. Our April - July breakdown has stayed at an average of about 0.4 cubic metres a day. However in the new house we are now apparently using closer to 0.6 cubic metres a day, so 25% more!

I don't understand. The only thing I can think is water pressure seems to be better so more comes out of the taps and shower? We have a v powerful shower head but just normal mixer, not power shower. We haven't changed the way we use water except I no longer have baths! We haven't used the slip and slide or paddling pool either.

I checked the meter then went out for 7 hours, came back and it hadn't moved. The smart meter also shows periods of 0 use overnight. So we can't have a leak? Is there something I've missed or is this just it now? They want to increase our direct debit to £97pm. Any advice welcome.

It might be a leak. I think you can get someone out who has some sort of tool that can identify leaks through hard surfaces so it's a quick and easy job to find it. My dad moved house recently and got a big shock for his first water bill, and had a massive leak. Identified quickly and covered by the house insurance.

We have one of those pretty big shower heads downstairs. If we both have a shower the tank runs out of hot water. If the OH has a shower and I have a (big, rolltop) bath, we do not. The shower uses far more water than I thought could be possible.

Do the children now have their own bathrooms and could they be indulging in longer showers? Do you water a larger garden? Have you a second or third vehicle to clean? Do you employ a cleaner or nanny who could be using appliances differently?

Pressure will make a lot of difference.

We had a similar situation when we moved house and it was water dripping into the toilet pan from the cistern. If you put some toilet tissue in the inside rim of the toilet, if the tissue gets wet you have water leaking into the toilet. The inside of the cistern has a line where the water level should sit under, but ours was over this line which resulted in the leak which increased our water bill. It may not be this but might be worth checking. Hope you get it sorted.

No, still just one bathroom. Kids having shorter showers than they used to if anything. Garden is bigger but we haven't had to water it! Same cars, DH pressure washes his at the garage and mine just stays filthy. No staff or guests. It's a bit weird.

We definitely have a v slow drip in the cistern as I did this check! How much difference did it make to your bill? The only thing is our meter is showing 0 usage at night etc which makes me think this leak can't be doing much? 🤔

Sounds tricky! If you're all having showers every day that would be the majority of the water usage, more so thant toilets.
An eco shower could use down to 6l per minute especially if it aerates the water, but a "power" or luxury shower could use 20l per minute.
Get a mop bucket or similar that you know the size, and a timer on your phone, and time how long it takes to fill it from empty.
Then divide the size in litres by the time in seconds, then multiply the result by 60, and you ideally want to be closer to 6 than to 15.
You can retro fit eco shower heads but they vary in quality, the free ones from the water company can be a good bet if it's just a standard setup.

And just to put it in perspective, 20 minutes of showers at 20l per minute plus 20 flushes of an older toilet would already be 0.6m³ of water.

For us it was about £15 a month.