£450 water bill! and getting paranoid...

Cardew

zAndy1 wrote:

I haven't got a clue if we're paying for surface water drainage, how do I find out? It says on the bill under sewerage service 'volume charged (foul & surface) @ 90% of water used' so does that mean we're paying for surface water drainage? How do I know if I'm entitled to a rebate on this, sorry but this is the first I've heard of such a thing so I'm slightly (ok very) confused.

Yes that is exactly what it means - you are paying for surface water drainage. i.e. you are paying for the rainwater from gutters etc to be carried away in the sewer.

This is the 'default' position that water companies take, although the vast majority have this surface water drained into soakaways. These are large pits dug, usually filled with rubble, when the house was built and then covered over - you cannot see any trace of them normally but they will often be on the plans. If you have access to your sewer cover, remove it and see if water from the gutters run into the sewer.

Virtually all modern houses have soakaways as it has been mandatory for many years unless there were special circumstances.

If your surface water goes into a soakaway you only pay for the foul/used water(baths, sinks, toilets etc) and you can claim a rebate for ?? years.

The charge for foul water can be substantial depending when your house was built and thus how it is assessed.

Wig

To the OP,

get on the pavement again and read the meter with all taps off, have OH turn on tap to a slow trickle, see if you can see the meter turning, if you can reduce the trickle until you are still seeing the meter turn. Go and look at the trickle to get an idea of how much water it takes for you to notice movement on the meter.

Before going to bed read the meter, in the morning before doing anything with water...read the meter.

Then measure a container with 10 litre mark. read meter, trickle it around to a convienient point to start from, a zero for example. Draw down 10 litres, read the meter again, does the reading make sense? i.e. has the meter just read 10 litres. On the meter the main numbers will be cubic metres (1000's of litres). So 10 litres will be 1.0000 - 1.0100

My meter is blue (called Wateau) and has an analogue dial like this 0001.8976
so the last dial reads in 10cl (100ml) units. I can see the last dial moving when there is only a dripping tap or toilet valve.

All this should tell you if you have a leak or not.

You could look into rainwater harvesting for your toilets.