How much water do you use

SuzeQStan

Thanks @mmmmikey - £200-£300 sounds great actually!  

We are willing to graft and can get it far enough away from the house & with a bit of creative guttering/trench digging should be able to divert the roof runoff the rain barrels don’t take - but we will need to do our homework.  

One thing is though I’d love to get rid of our grass currently on top of where we would put the soak away - standard practice seems to be a layer of topsoil and turf overtop but wondering if we could get away with another surface for it. Would love to bin off the lawn mower - and garden has taken up all the remaining space that used to be lawn.

horsewithnoname

mmmmikey said:

horsewithnoname said:

Albermarle said:

horsewithnoname said:

I don’t know, I’m on water rates, I think paying for water is wrong; happy to pay to have useable water delivered to my home but I don’t think people should have to pay for what should be a basic human right. I don’t waste water, but not flushing the toilet? Revolting! 

Anyway, when most people are on meters, the price of water will rocket because the greedy water companies won’t let that opportunity pass them by. 

The MSE advice about flushing toilets is - If it is yellow let it mellow, if it is brown flush it down.


Presumably for water to be freely supplied and removed, then the cost would have to come from more general taxation, which tends to be unpopular.

I never said it should be totally free. Though that is a good suggestion. 

I assume the advice on not flushing your toilet is for metered water? Which are the sort of things having to pay for the amount of water you use drives you to. 

No thanks. 

It's precisely that mindset that drives prices up and is one of the reasons those without meters have taken the biggest hit on prices. But if you're into waste and don't like saving money then fill your boots....

What mindset? Flushing the toilet?  I save water whenever I can, but there are some things I draw the line at. 

singhini

Single adult:
2024 annual usage in litres = 23,284 (roughly 64 litres a day)
2025 usage (Jan to March) =   2,443 (roughly 27 litres a day)

Shedman

mmmmikey said:

SuzeQStan said:

2 adults large 3 bed house - when we 1st moved in our water metered house 6 years ago our monthly dd was over £50 for water.

we soon realised we had a leaky loo and with a £6 (inc shipping) diaphragm part from online website which OH fitted after watching yewtoobe video we reduced our monthly water dd to £30 per month.

OH showers every day - me every other day with sink wash in between,  

dishwasher run 3 times & 4 loads of clothes washing per week.

Garden watered from 4x 200 litre + rain barrels - weather permitting.  Garden is a passionate pastime so won’t let it die and will use mains water if I have to (usually means a month of mains watering each year)

Use water collected in washing up bowls (and other tubs) from sinks/ shower whilst waiting on it coming up to temperature. These are poured into the rain barrels. 

We don’t run water whilst brushing teeth, use the small flush when we can.  

Water from condenser dryer added to rain barrels.

we are on a water meter and used to be charged £30 per month but this has been raised recently to £43 per month.  So our efforts have redoubled. As per latest bill our average usage is 204litres per day.  This did include recent pressure washing so might be skewed.

Currently costing a DIY soak away but so far these appear to be an expensive undertaking.  Would be grateful if anyone had experience or a helpful link to a least costly option.

Hi - it's years ( hmmm.... decades ) since I dug a hole for a soakaway working as a teenage labourer for a local builder, so your post got me thinking and Googling. As far as I can see the current norm is to use some kind of soakaway crate, rather than just dig a hole and fill it with loosely packed rubble. But even having said that it doesn't look to me to be all that expensive as a DIY proposition, with maybe £200 or £300 expenditure for drainage pipes, soakaway crate, etc. Or do you consider that expensive - I guess it's all a bit subjective? I'm assuming you'd dig the hole and trenches yourself and have somewhere to lose the spoil. Or is there a restriction in your property which means you need something special? Or maybe you need to do other drainage work? 

Given the recent price rises, it's something that might make sense for me too, so thanks for the idea

Unfortunately even if you have a soakaway and other surface water drainage that doesn't go into the public sewers as we have on our estate (our surface water goes through pipes that discharge into the local brook as far as I can see from the original plans for the estate from 1985) you don't save a huge amount.  Southern Water very generously (sarcasm) offers a rebate of currently just over £25 a year (i.e. the standing charge only for the surface water element).   Doesn't seem worth the effort and/or cost of digging a soakaway if you've not already got on (unless other water companies are much more generous with their rebates)

quartzz

single use, with a few recycling methods in place

actual water use October-March, £36 (I'd say roughly 1M³ per week. maybe slightly less than that). waste water charge £24
standing order for water £18, standing order for waste £13
surface water drainage SC £24, highway drainage SC £8

total bill £125, with £36 of that being the actual stuff. When I moved in Oct 24, I got an estimated 6 monthly bill of £265. I phoned up to be put on a meter that was already installed underneath the pavement outside the house (70 minutes in Severn Trents phone queue - they obviously can't afford to take on any more telephone staff)

Severn Trent have told me the SC is going from £18 to £25 (28% increase?), and £13 to £20 (35% increase)
That's the SC increase, and not the water itself. This is obviously f     g fine. Since they are increasing prices, they'll be able to afford to take on more staff. So that'll be super. #s.

TL;DR, I think I'm using <100L per day

mmmmikey

Shedman said:

mmmmikey said:

SuzeQStan said:

2 adults large 3 bed house - when we 1st moved in our water metered house 6 years ago our monthly dd was over £50 for water.

we soon realised we had a leaky loo and with a £6 (inc shipping) diaphragm part from online website which OH fitted after watching yewtoobe video we reduced our monthly water dd to £30 per month.

OH showers every day - me every other day with sink wash in between,  

dishwasher run 3 times & 4 loads of clothes washing per week.

Garden watered from 4x 200 litre + rain barrels - weather permitting.  Garden is a passionate pastime so won’t let it die and will use mains water if I have to (usually means a month of mains watering each year)

Use water collected in washing up bowls (and other tubs) from sinks/ shower whilst waiting on it coming up to temperature. These are poured into the rain barrels. 

We don’t run water whilst brushing teeth, use the small flush when we can.  

Water from condenser dryer added to rain barrels.

we are on a water meter and used to be charged £30 per month but this has been raised recently to £43 per month.  So our efforts have redoubled. As per latest bill our average usage is 204litres per day.  This did include recent pressure washing so might be skewed.

Currently costing a DIY soak away but so far these appear to be an expensive undertaking.  Would be grateful if anyone had experience or a helpful link to a least costly option.

Hi - it's years ( hmmm.... decades ) since I dug a hole for a soakaway working as a teenage labourer for a local builder, so your post got me thinking and Googling. As far as I can see the current norm is to use some kind of soakaway crate, rather than just dig a hole and fill it with loosely packed rubble. But even having said that it doesn't look to me to be all that expensive as a DIY proposition, with maybe £200 or £300 expenditure for drainage pipes, soakaway crate, etc. Or do you consider that expensive - I guess it's all a bit subjective? I'm assuming you'd dig the hole and trenches yourself and have somewhere to lose the spoil. Or is there a restriction in your property which means you need something special? Or maybe you need to do other drainage work? 

Given the recent price rises, it's something that might make sense for me too, so thanks for the idea

Unfortunately even if you have a soakaway and other surface water drainage that doesn't go into the public sewers as we have on our estate (our surface water goes through pipes that discharge into the local brook as far as I can see from the original plans for the estate from 1985) you don't save a huge amount.  Southern Water very generously (sarcasm) offers a rebate of currently just over £25 a year (i.e. the standing charge only for the surface water element).   Doesn't seem worth the effort and/or cost of digging a soakaway if you've not already got on (unless other water companies are much more generous with their rebates)

Hi, thanks for this. For Anglian Water the rebate is £49 per annum so much more worthwhile

MusicLover1357

We don't have water restrictions. Mine 3 person household , about 220l per day feels more than sufficient. It covers all our daily needs.

SuzeQStan

Hi, thanks for this. For Anglian Water the rebate is £49 per annum so much more worthwhile

UU is £80 - the thing that I’m not sure of is the requirement to prove that all run off doesn’t go to a sewer.  We could divert all the house runoff but not sure of the driveway where there is a grate in the road.

singhini

quartzz said:

single use, with a few recycling methods in place

actual water use October-March, £36 (I'd say roughly 1M³ per week. maybe slightly less than that). waste water charge £24
standing order for water £18, standing order for waste £13
surface water drainage SC £24, highway drainage SC £8

total bill £125, with £36 of that being the actual stuff. When I moved in Oct 24, I got an estimated 6 monthly bill of £265. I phoned up to be put on a meter that was already installed underneath the pavement outside the house (70 minutes in Severn Trents phone queue - they obviously can't afford to take on any more telephone staff)

Severn Trent have told me the SC is going from £18 to £25 (28% increase?), and £13 to £20 (35% increase)
That's the SC increase, and not the water itself. This is obviously f     g fine. Since they are increasing prices, they'll be able to afford to take on more staff. So that'll be super. #s.

TL;DR, I think I'm using <100L per day

That's the beauty of living in this country, £125 and you can walk straight upto the tap and drink directly from it (no need to go to a well in the middle of the village).
Sometimes we don't realise how lucky we are.

mmmmikey

What kind of surface does the drive have? My original driveway was concrete and sloping towards the road, but I have since replaced it with gravel (in grids) so there's no longer any run off (not the reason I did it, I wasn't really thinking of drainage at the time). If you have something similar you could maybe just do the same? Or maybe have a strip of gravel say 1m wide at the lower end of the drive so the water soaks away rather than drain into the road grate? 

I'm still researching soakaways, have just dug out a copy of the building regs, will let you know if I find anything interesting.

As an aside, I put in a large undergound rainwater tank when I was improving the drainage and "landscaping" the garden a few years ago (landscaping being a bit of a grand term for what I did!) At the time the economics were questionable, but my thinking was if I'm lucky it should just about pay for itself in 20 years time and even if it doesn't it's good for the environment and won't ruin me financially. It was a question of do it then or never do it, so I got the pick axe out and dug, dug, dug. Roll on 5 years and (a) I'm collecting more water than I had anticipated, and (b) now prices have increased it's looking like an altogether more sensible investment. According to my latest rough calculations I should be able to save £180 a year by flushing the toilet with rainwater, a worthwhile saving for a tank, pump, etc. that cost just over £2000. Food for thought maybe (if you enjoy digging ).