So the question is following:
How much water do you consume per month or year on meterd supply?
We are in 3 bed detached house in Midlands. 3 persons (2 adults and one teen) + 1 cat. We use showers only (walk in showers rather than baths tubs…) and I would not say that we have an exessive running water situation.
I just looked at my bills and estimated that it would be ~ 300 m3 + a year which in total is about £1200 per year (Severn Trent Water) or 120 a month…
Which is eye watering (pun intended) amount, especially considering that as per searches the average 3 bed 3 person household should consumer between 100 to 150 m3.
I have checked – there are no leaks anywhere. We wash our dishes in dishwasher and our washing machine is A+ (so low water consumption). we almost never water plants (only in mid summer if there are few dry days) and I never water lawn.. no jacuzzi or swimming pools…
and my water bill is easilly DOUBLE on what is average in UK.
I wonder if our water consumption habbits are somewhat bad, or I have some sort of leak between meter and house inlet?
any suggestions?
How much water 3 Bed 3 person Household consume a year?
byu/yessuz inFrugal
Posted by yessuz
12 Comments
Wow, water is free where I live (it’s funded by general property tax revenue).
But that amount seems extremely high. It’s more than my entire property tax bill for my house.
I used to design septic systems and we’d assume 120 gallons per day, per bedroom for domestic sewer. That’s a bit conservative, but an ok starting guess.
That would not include irrigation.
Ask the water company for some dye packs. They can be put in your toilet tank to make sure it’s not leaking. My friend had one that was leaking just a tad, like couldn’t hear it or see it, and their water bill got up to $600 one month bc it just ran constantly.
If you do find a leak, most water companies will take the amount down for that one bill for you too. I’m not sure if that requires water history though, or how that works. That would be a water company question.
300 m³/year for 3 people is definitely on the high side, that’s ~270L per person/day vs ~140–160L UK average. if you’re sure there’s no visible leak, check for a silent leak: note the meter before bed, don’t use water overnight, recheck in morning.
also worth checking toilet cisterns (common culprit) and if your meter includes any shared/outside supply. if the overnight test moves, you’ve got a hidden leak somewhere.
Pretty much the same as you, 3 bed semi in the midlands with seven Trent and it’s £83 a month
are you sure there’s no leak (ie, could there be a slab leak?) can you ask the utility company to check they’re reading your meter correctly?
We used 86m³ with 2,5 adults (we didn’t cut her in half, she was just was not home as much)
Your amount is honestly WILD.
I recommend: calling you water company and ask them to check the water clock (the little thing that counts the amount, idk I clock is the right translation).
And: write down your meter reading every day, close to same time, if you do something that obviously uses more water (shower, dishes, cleaning etc) than also wrote it down before and after. Maybe this way you can find it.
And consider: old pipes in houses are sometimes weird connected, so make sure your clock only counts your usage and not for another apparent
Having been a teen I would guess your teen uses far more water than the adults.
I’d also bet you have a leaking toilet. A little food coloring in the toilet tank will show you the leak.
My parents were in a similar situation, I could HEAR one of the toilet leaks. The other one was obvious with the food coloring check. Just squirt it in the tank and look in the bowl. Quite a small leak 24 hours a day accumulates quickly.
100 – 150 gallons per day is pretty standard for a single household. You may well have underground issues that are unseen. If you have a valve at the house, you can shit it off and watch the meter.
I live in Europe but not uk. 2 kids 2 adults. We use around 5 m3/month and around 8 m3 in the summer months. We live in an apartment not a house if that counts.
We run the dishwasher daily or every two days in stead of hand washing them as it’s more efficient.
Also for the washer we have a very efficient model and I do a load every two days. I refrain from washing clean clothes. I wear a lot of wool, merino and such which I air after each wear and very rarely wash. But for the kids a new set of clothes daily. I wash the bedsheets once per week for the kids and two weeks for us. Pijamas every week and towels every 4 days.
We do not shower daily, just once every two days unless we do some intense physical activity. We have an hygienic shower we use everyday.
Turn off every faucet and other water source in your home and then check your meter. Watch it for at least a minute to make sure it is not moving at all. Some leaks can be insidious.
Harder to catch, my mom’s boiler kept refilling more often than it should have, which used a lot of water. We actually caught that one because every time we went downstairs to do laundry the thing would randomly fill. A plumber was able to fix the issue.
Also, do you have outdoor faucets for the garden? Both my mom and my grandmother had issues with people stealing water from outdoor faucets. With my grandmother the neighbor ran a hose from her faucet to his house to wash his vehicles every day. My grandmother was in assisted living at the time so the jerk thought he could get away with it. My dad caught that by accident when he randomly stopped by to check on the house while trying to figure out why the water bill had suddenly tripled. With my mom a local homeless man was taking water to drink. She wouldn’t have cared (she’s not heartless) except he wouldn’t turn it off when he was done and she found the hose running a few times, so we finally convinced her to shut it off from inside the basement.
My water and sewer bills come quarterly and are rounded to the nearest thousand gallons for the quarter. Now that I am living by myself, my bills always say one thousand gallons used. I doubt that they would ever say zero gallons no matter how little I used. That would be four thousand gallons, or 15 cubic meters per year, just for me.