Is my water bill too high?

neillya1

Hi everyone, newbie here

I've been living away from home for 12 months now (I'm a student in Manchester) and just worked out that my first yearly water bill (I'm charged quarterly) is £437. My most recent quarterly bill was £116.45!

There's three of us living in a flat and don't use that much water (one shower per day, washing up, 2 washing machine loads a week). This seems a bit high? Or is this normal?

United Utilities are our provider, but it's all done by our apartment block management (they read meters and tell UU, we don't get to see our own meters!). The bills have a breakdown of everything and the prices per unit/standing charge are the same as on the UU website, but still the bill just seems too high.

Am I being naive in hoping it would be cheaper?

Cavemanu

hi there,

We have a water meter and our most recent 6 monthly bill last week was £108 (Severn-Trent), that is for 2 of us. We try to be careful with water usage (no watering garden except with rainwater, no car washing) but we are still working on it.

All water companies websites seem to have water calculators to help people to work out how much water they use - suggest you try one out, with some input from your flatmates!

Apparently toilets seem to contribute a large % of water use in a residential situation (in terms of number of people & frequency of use). We have low water use dual flush toilets.

If you have a single type flush/older type loo worth thinking about getting those free HIPPO gel sachets from your water company to put in the cistern of the loo to reduce the amount of water flushing away.

Also, not sure how long you have lived in the flat, be careful you have not inherited a water 'debt' incurred by previous tenants. That happened to us once, and we had to ask the water company to recalculate our use, based on recent actuals.
This reduced our bill significantly!

I'm sure more extreme domestic water saving suggestions will follow along in a bit!

neillya1

Cavemanu wrote: »

hi there,

We have a water meter and our most recent 6 monthly bill last week was £108 (Severn-Trent), that is for 2 of us. We try to be careful with water usage (no watering garden except with rainwater, no car washing) but we are still working on it.

All water companies websites seem to have water calculators to help people to work out how much water they use - suggest you try one out, with some input from your flatmates!

Apparently toilets seem to contribute a large % of water use in a residential situation (in terms of number of people & frequency of use). We have low water use dual flush toilets.

If you have a single type flush/older type loo worth thinking about getting those free HIPPO gel sachets from your water company to put in the cistern of the loo to reduce the amount of water flushing away.

Also, not sure how long you have lived in the flat, be careful you have not inherited a water 'debt' incurred by previous tenants. That happened to us once, and we had to ask the water company to recalculate our use, based on recent actuals.
This reduced our bill significantly!

I'm sure more extreme domestic water saving suggestions will follow along in a bit!

Hi, thanks for the info
We don't use water in the garden or anything (since we don't have one! ) and we do have dual flush toilets (although one of them only seems to work on the full flush setting )

We've been here 12 months and I know there were 2 previous tenants so perhaps a water debt is a possibility - problem is we can't contact UU about it as they say go through the management company, who are useless and don't even let us see our own meters!

macman

You pay the bill, so they cannot deny you access to the meter. Enforce your rights.

Cardew

With 3 in flat average consumption should be around 170 to 180 cubic metres a year.

You can look up UU charges on web.

Agree with above, you have every right to see your bills and meter.

neillya1

Cardew wrote: »

With 3 in flat average consumption should be around 170 to 180 cubic metres a year.

You can look up UU charges on web.

Agree with above, you have every right to see your bills and meter.

Just checked my most recent bill and our usage over the last 12 months is 128 cubic metres, so lower than average.

Yet yearly bills are £437. Is that really normal? Maybe I'm really naive and water is just a lot more expensive than I thought!

All the charges on the bill add up too - standing charge works out at 9p/day for water and 4p/day for sewerage. 1 cubic metre of water is £1.54 and 1 cubic metre of wastewater is £1.20.

Weirdly, they've undercharged me for water and wastewater volumes by 28p and 47p... someone can't do maths.

Cardew

The charges are here:

http://www.unitedutilities.com/Our-charges-2012-2013.aspx

Your £1.54 and £1.20 are correct for 2012/13(from April) but prior to April 2012 would have been lower.

It appears you are also being charged £71 for Fixed charge (surface water & highway drainage). You may well be able to claim relief from that charge - look up Surface Water Drainage(SWD) in this forum.

If water from gutters and land does not enter the sewerage system, you claim relief. The 'default' position is you are charged for SWD.

P.S.
If you were in the South West you would pay double your charges!