Do you have a water meter and how much water do you use?

[andyoxon]

Metered mains water here works out to about 0.14p/L, and our recent bill with a water meter was around £130 (includes wastewater charge of 56p/1000L) for 180 days.  

We (family of four) apparently used 57000L (57m3) of water in this 6 months. I'm surprised we used this much, because we are careful with water, but I guess still run a d/w and w/m almost everyday.  0.43p/day is very good value. Though using 315L/day seems like too much really - I do intend to get at least one water butt in the near future.

Andy

edit. calculations

[Pancho]

So £260 per annum?

Ye Gods, I'm going to phone up our water people - I pay over £100 a month for the privilege of flushing the khazi.

Where are you - water prices vary widely across the country?

[Woofage]

So £260 per annum?

Ye Gods, I'm going to phone up our water people - I pay over £100 a month for the privilege of flushing the khazi.

Where are you - water prices vary widely across the country?

£100 per month . Our bill has just gone down to £34 for a family of 4 (that might only be for 10/12 months though). That's still a lot more than AO's. Mind you, we're at home during the day.

[cyclone]

I just got a bill for £180 for an unoccupied building, admittedly there are standing charges but wtf!!!!!!
Have even turned the water off at the mains! the pure and simple fact is that I must have a leak between the mains stopcock and the house stopcock. 
Means I have to dig up the carport.......not happy at all as the place has been on the market for the last 9 months..Grrrr Poxy water meter!

[Wobbly John]

On a water meter, our bill is about £160 per annum.

There is mostly only 2 of us at home now, and we both work full time.

Anyway, I mostly drink beer instead.  

[andygates]

Got one, because as a solo occupant it's a jillion times cheaper...

...so they tell me.  I've never paid attention to it or the bill.  Direct Debit + reading nipple + water butt for bike washing = low usage and low worry.

[Fi]

I live in a relatively small house, so my water rates weren't huge anyway. I live alone so had a meter installed and  I currently pay £16 a month saving about £130 a year.  I'm am a few pounds in credit. I have four water butts, but in a hot summer they quickly run out by the time the pond's filled, the car's rinsed and the veggies watered.

[Hello, I am Bruce]

I don't have a water meter.  Currently pay £349.48 to Scottish Water for water and sewage.

With a meter, it looks like the fixed charges come to £371.10.  So it would cost me more, even before two of us consume paltry 44m³ of water each year.

Numbers, in case I've got it all wrong, from Scottish Water
No water meter: water costs £164.24, sewage is £185.60
With a meter: fixed charge based on size of meter for water £137.42 and sewage £139.20, property drainage charge £37.34, roads drainage charge £37.34.

[oncemore]

Even in a very low rateable value and bottom Council Tax band house I rather suspect that with just the two of us now here we'd save with a meter.

Unfortunately, I can't imagine where one could be placed, without digging up the solid floors.

[Jaded]

So £260 per annum?

Ye Gods, I'm going to phone up our water people - I pay over £100 a month for the privilege of flushing the khazi.

Where are you - water prices vary widely across the country?

You get charged for water you use and for drainage, so if you have a big roof you pay more.I think.

[border-rider]

Works fine as long as they read the correct meter - or don't subtract the reading on one from the last reading taken on the one that supplies the cows' drinking water

We had a bill for £1800 for our first fortnight in this house.  It took them months to resolve it.

[andyoxon]

So £260 per annum?

Ye Gods, I'm going to phone up our water people - I pay over £100 a month for the privilege of flushing the khazi.

Where are you - water prices vary widely across the country?

We're Thames Water - Abingdon/Oxford Area.

[border-rider]

You get charged for water you use and for drainage, so if you have a big roof you pay more.I think.

Modern houses should discharge rainwater to soakaways, so you should (if you dont have an old house) be able to not pay that component.

We don't have mains drainage, so again we pay less. In principle.

[MSeries]

You get charged for water you use and for drainage, so if you have a big roof you pay more.I think.

Yorkshire Water charge drainage as a percentage of ones consumption, nowt to do with my roof.

[Regulator]

We wanted one in the flat in London - but they couldn't fit one... 

We don't have one in the current house as they can't fit one... 

We will have one in the new house 

[Cudzoziemiec]

Had one in Bangalore, but I couldn't give figures or costs since it was one meter for the whole building - 3 flats - and the landlord just included it in the rent. But I can tell you that the 1000 litre roof tank used to last about 1-2 days for a total of about 7 or 8 people. I read that water there is charged on a sliding scale. I think the first 200 litres a month are free, then most of it is charged at 9 rupees (about 11p) per hectolitre. I think. I do definitely remember that the actual cost of supplying water was stated at 18 rupees (for the same unit of volume) so even at the top end of the scale, water was still subsidised. And on occasions when the supply failed, we paid 200 rupees for a 3,000 litre "half-tanker" of water (into the sump tank, usually supplied by mains, from where it was pumped to the roof tank to supply taps) so that works out at less than 0.001 pence per litre. But the cost was not a factor - rather that there's nothing like shortages to promote water saving!

[andyoxon]

For those (from poll) who aren't familiar with what a water meter is...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_meter   

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

Yorkshire Water charge drainage as a percentage of ones consumption, nowt to do with my roof.

Yorkshire Water are third on my list behind Zurich Insurance and BT. They're a bunch of incompetents and crooks and furthermore, incompetent crooks. And I don't even live in Yorkshire!

No water meters in Scotland. It's not like we're short of water. It falls out of the sky with alarming frequency.

[Woofage]

You get charged for water you use and for drainage, so if you have a big roof you pay more.I think.

Modern houses should discharge rainwater to soakaways, so you should (if you dont have an old house) be able to not pay that component.

Or keep it in big tanks or drain into an irrigation system .

I did hear of one WA that tried to impose a charge for rain water that didn't go into the drain, on the basis that they "owned" it all anyway and if it was lost the WA deserved compensation .

[Pancho]

For commercial arrangements, if you can show that not all the water that comes onto the site leaves as wastewater, you can quite a good discount. They assume that 98% of what goes on is returned but if you're doing a lot of watering (of pitches etc) then the 98% is overcharging. Equally, if you have a complex site with leaks then you shouldn't be paying for the leaked water to be taken away - as it ain't.

[andyoxon]

Yorkshire Water charge drainage as a percentage of ones consumption, nowt to do with my roof.

Yorkshire Water are third on my list behind Zurich Insurance and BT. They're a bunch of incompetents and crooks and furthermore, incompetent crooks. And I don't even live in Yorkshire!

No water meters in Scotland. It's not like we're short of water. It falls out of the sky with alarming frequency.

I'd be interested to know what the cost/m3 of water is in Scotland.

edit from Bruce's figures it looks like £3.7/m³ (No w/meter).  

Here in Oxfordshire we pay  £1.4/m³ (metered; includes a fixed charge of £0.23/m3).

[numbnuts]

I've been on a meter for 10 years now it was £29 a month before went down to £15 and so many years later I'm only paying £17 a month and I'm home all day

[Morrisette]

Had one in our old place, which was v. cheap - turns out the meter was broken so they undercharged us for four years   

In the new house they told me would have to practically destory the (brand new) kitchen to even do the survey so we haven't got one (took two attempts for them to even tell us that). Anglian Water are a bunch of shysters as well if anyone's interested! They screwed up the bill, sent it three times with three different account numbers, cancelled the survey appointment with an hours notice...I'm not sure how much we would save on a meter even if we could get one fitted without extensive building work - as we never had an accurate reading when we had a meter....

A Question. If you live somewhere where a new house owner is made to have a meter fitted (I think this happens in some areas?), would the water company pay for (say) destroying and rebuilding a new kitchen to fit one, or would they just give it up as a bad job?

[rogerzilla]

We pay £30/month, which is quite a lot considering it's Thames Water and they're the cheapest.  A back of the envelope calculation suggests about 170 cubic metres a year (1 cubic metre = 1000 litres, so that's over 28,000 toilet flushes).

I paid the same as that in Plymouth when I lived on my own - South West Water was eye-wateringly expensive, not because it is a dry region (there is more water than anyone knows what to do with) but because they were, for the first time, installing sewage plants instead of just pumping shite into the sea.

The wastewater charge depends on your circumstances:

http://www.thameswater.co.uk/cps/rde/xbcr/corp/201011-metered-charges-leaflet.pdf

Next poll should be "was water the Tories' most dogmatic and barking mad privatisation ever?"

[Hello, I am Bruce]

I'd be interested to know what the cost/m3 of water is in Scotland.

edit from Bruce's figures it looks like £3.7/m³ (No w/meter).  

On top of the fixed fees for metered water: £2.15 m^-3 for the first 25m³, £0.78 m^-3 thereafter.  Plus £2.61 (down to £1.24 after 25m³) for the waste produced by every m³ supplied.  So even if the fixed costs were reduced enough to make it worthwhile having a meter, I would still be stuck with a pricing policy that penalises low usage relative to high.

Even though Scotland has lots of water, it's still environmentally costly to process it for domestic use and to dispose of sewage, so I'd rather see a pricing policy that made metering worthwhile.