The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Share Your Badassity => Topic started by: CCCA on June 30, 2020, 03:45:27 PM
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We rented out our house for 5 months while we were traveling earlier this year and just checked our water bill to see how the tenants did (3 adults and 2 young children 3 and under). They used 177 gallons per day in the middle of spring, which our water utility says is around average (164 gallons per day) for our household lot size and number of people. However, last year the same time (our family of 2 adults and 2 school age children) used about 70 gallons per day so we are well below average. Our kids (and adults) don't shower everyday and try to minimize water usage.
We live in the SF Bay Area and took out our grass a few years ago and have a relatively small lots size (~4000 sq ft) with drought tolerant plants and a planter bed for veggies. Our water rate is $4/unit of water which is 748 gallons or half of a cent per gallon.
I'd be interested to hear how much water your household uses and how many occupants, and details about your yard.
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By cutting animal products out of my diet, I save approximately 33,000 gallons of water each month.
That's about 1,100 gallons per day saved.
I don't pay my own water bill, but a quick search of estimated water consumption for my area is approximately 101 gallons per person per day, or 3,030 gallons per month, outside of the water needed to produce the food you eat.
The savings doesn't show up on my water bill or benefit me personally, but I'm okay with that.
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You know how I can tell you're in the west?
Here in New England, we have more water than we know what to do with. A couple decades ago, the state mandated separate water meters on every home. My hometown city sued the state to stop this requirement, where cities and towns in the western part of the state has so much water, they've never needed meters and adding them added un-necessary cost. I remember annual bills for water of $15 at my parents' house, which included watering the lawn and winter flooding of our ice rink many times. Once the meters were added, regardless of how much water was used, the bill became $15 for the water and $3 for the meter.
I get that the west has water shortages. Too many people with limited water and all. But the whole country doesn't have this problem.
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Our typical pre-COVID usage was about 3-4 HCF a month, or about 87 gallons per day.
Post COVID, sheesh last month was 9 HCF. Highest ever. I think a lot of that was watering (we planted a new level of "low water" ground cover, but it needs watering the first month to take root), and the kiddie pool.
I expect we will even out at about 6 HCF, or so I hope.
I started taking Navy showers again, but that doesn't make much of a difference.
Our "lawn" is dirt. We have a small garden with self watering containers.
My teenager takes long showers, but not often.
The kids aren't bathing that much this summer. Sometimes we just take them to the beach.
I think just man...we are here 24/7 now, so we are drinking water, eating, washing dishes, peeing (but we don't flush after every use) all. day. long.
Pre-COVID, we were doing that at work, kids ate school lunch, far fewer dishes.
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We use 87 gallons/day which is about average in Germany as a family of three. We are not really saving water, because even our roof collects more water than we use. Electricity and heat that is more important because so far up north solar isn‘t working four month each out of year and daylight in winter is about 8 hours. We used a lot less water when we were living in an apartment rather than a single family home.
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When we had a house, our average was below 70 gallons per day, most of the time 3 people but sometimes 2. We had low water using appliances which helped and a no water yard (unless I had just planted something). The funny part of it was we had a bill that would compare you to the lowest using neighbor in your area and we were that neighbor. Made me chuckle every time I saw it.
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You know how I can tell you're in the west?
Here in New England, we have more water than we know what to do with. A couple decades ago, the state mandated separate water meters on every home. My hometown city sued the state to stop this requirement, where cities and towns in the western part of the state has so much water, they've never needed meters and adding them added un-necessary cost. I remember annual bills for water of $15 at my parents' house, which included watering the lawn and winter flooding of our ice rink many times. Once the meters were added, regardless of how much water was used, the bill became $15 for the water and $3 for the meter.
I get that the west has water shortages. Too many people with limited water and all. But the whole country doesn't have this problem.
Yeah, down here in Florida we have a 3" artesian well that shoots water 6 feet in the air, no pump. The problem being that as the sea levels rise the aquifer will get salty and useless.
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My water bill doesn't have much helpful info on it. It has a small graph that say "gallons" and the marks on it are 3, 6, and 9, but I assume that is not gallons per day, as we are almost always between 3 and 6 and our dogs drink a minimum of 2 gallons per day and we are both daily shower takers.
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My wife and I generally run between 2,700 and 3,200 gallons per month. So we are not particularly frugal by the standards of this forum, but we probably use less than the average American. We practice selective flushing, but we still have old (3 gal/flush) toilets. I shower daily; my wife usually goes a couple or three days between showers. We have a few outside plants that we water, but we don't bother watering the lawn. Our adult son still does his laundry at our house because he doesn't have a washer. We drink mostly water, and we do almost all of our cooking at home. We are retired, so we're home all day every day.
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You know how I can tell you're in the west?
Here in New England, we have more water than we know what to do with. A couple decades ago, the state mandated separate water meters on every home. My hometown city sued the state to stop this requirement, where cities and towns in the western part of the state has so much water, they've never needed meters and adding them added un-necessary cost. I remember annual bills for water of $15 at my parents' house, which included watering the lawn and winter flooding of our ice rink many times. Once the meters were added, regardless of how much water was used, the bill became $15 for the water and $3 for the meter.
I get that the west has water shortages. Too many people with limited water and all. But the whole country doesn't have this problem.
I've lived in the southeast and the Appalachians all my life, and any time that I've been on a city water system, usage has always been metered. It has gotten progressively more expensive over the years. Water and sewer are billed together and are both based on water usage. The sewer rate has always been much higher than the water rate.
Right now we're getting billed the base rate because we complained about needing to run massive amounts of water to clear the lines back when the city was having problems with frequent line breaks a few years ago. So we get billed $76/month for water, sewer, and trash service combined, regardless of usage. If we were getting billed based on our metered use of around 3,000 gallons per month, the bill would probably be close to $100. So it definitely pays to conserve water.
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When we had a house, our average was below 70 gallons per day, most of the time 3 people but sometimes 2. We had low water using appliances which helped and a no water yard (unless I had just planted something). The funny part of it was we had a bill that would compare you to the lowest using neighbor in your area and we were that neighbor. Made me chuckle every time I saw it.
We're that way with electricity. We are below the "most efficient neighbors" line. And WAY below the "average" line
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I'll fess up - we're somewhere around 6k gallons a month usage, or about 200 gallons per day. 5 people (2 adults, 3 boys - 5,3,<1)
It's kind of hard to tell though, since our bill is quarterly and they round to the nearest 1k gallons. Our highest usage period was about 20k gallons per quarter, or 6.7k gallons per month (225ish per day).
I suspect the age of our appliances and how frequently things are washed is the biggest culprit. Our landlord has no interest in replacing our 18 year old dishwasher, 15 year old top-loader agitator washing machine, or 15 year old water heater, or the 1.5* gal/flush toilets. None of these units are even remotely eco friendly.
*Tank fill is adjusted to be as low as will successfully flush solid waste.
Having young boys, food/dirt/spit up/blowout/potty accidents (on their and our clothes, thanks kids!) mean we're running probably 8 (full machine) loads of laundry a week. Dishwasher is run every day and a half or so. Baths (shared water) for the boys every 3 days, and my wife and I average about 8 minutes of showering a day combined (I take a fast shower daily, she showers every couple days).
Our yard is hardly watered, maybe once a week if that, but I do wash our cars at home every 2 weeks or so.
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My family has two adults (daily showers), two kids under 5 (almost daily baths), does lots of laundry (we have two washing machines), and since it has been warm we've been watering a bunch of trees planted in the spring and filling a kiddie pool at least four times a week (some of water does eventually also get dumped on the young trees). I was expecting my water usage to be pretty high, but the recent water bill only showed us using 145 gallons a day.
Our house is located less than 1000 feet from the world's second largest reservoir of liquid fresh water, so unlike some areas, there's not much of a need to conserve water.
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We typically use 1 or 2 "units" of water a month. I don't have any idea what that means. But I do know that it means we can't do much to lower our water bill, because you get charged for 1 unit regardless.
The main reason I see that we save water over our neighbors is we do not water the lawn. It goes dormant in the late summer. We also have very low flow shower heads and low flow toilets, and now that I pretty much never leave the house I shower less frequently.
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Looks like I am billed for water based on cubic feet of water. We were billed for 800 cubic feet of water last billing period. Same billing cycle last year was 600 cubic feet. Our meter cost is 50% or more of our water bill each month. So obviously using more with people at home all day, more frequent laundry due to increased usage of washcloths and towels, and my kids have discovered that baths are more relaxing than showers. We do drink a LOT of water every day (2-3 gallons for people and probably close to a gallon for the dog). So looks like we are currently averaging around 200 gallons of water used daily.
The kicker is that our sewer expense is based on our water usage. And the months used to estimate for the year were the high points of WFH so largest bills of the year.
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I remember having a discussion with an economics graduate student years ago. He was studying water rates and found that in order to get people to dramatically change their usage they had to increase the price about 10x.
We live in the desert and our water/sewer/garbage bill normally runs about $75-100 per month. No real landscaping to irrigate so that's solely for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and bathing. Of that, the water portion is maybe $40 a month (and sewer is based on water usage). We have eight people in our family and have to do laundry and a load of dishes every day, if not twice a day. So even if the price of water doubled or tripled we would probably not change anything.
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I used about 800 gallons per month when I had long hair and that was cut in half to 400 gallons after I cut it short and installed a water saving device in the kitchen tap. That was in my previous apartment were I had a meter. I took daily showers although I don’t wash the hair daily. I also had a dishwasher and a washing machine.
Here the average usage is 37 gallons per day and person.
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I have no idea what our water usage is because DH pays the bill, then shreds it. I'll try to remember to ask him when the next one arrives.
I'm answering because he may or may not work for a utility that provides water. There is a great deal of concern that we may be heading toward another drought in the Bay Area.
That may be TMI, but according to some, it's better than P2F.
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We use 66 gallons a day for a family of four when we're not watering the lawn or washing cloth diapers. This is our first summer in the house so I'm interested to see what our water bill is with the lawn added. We have pretty new water efficient appliances, don't pre-rinse our dishes before loading them in the dishwasher, and don't do daily showers/baths. Other than that we don't really attempt to conserve much, so I'm a little surprised we're on the low end.
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Two people, about 30 gallons per day. I do a lot of gardening, so there is yard use. The water bill is flat rate for anything under about 110 gallons per day, so our water thriftiness doesn't actually save any money. I have complained to the county many times about the stupidity of their system, but they don't care.
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It is shocking to hear that people use potable water to water grass. Every house should ideally have a double circuit, one for potable water in the kitchen and one for other use.
In our first house where we lived for 15 years, we had our own well and a septic tank for grey water (toilet on closed tank). We flushed the loo with very little water to ensure we needed to empty the closed tank only once a year. In the next house, I didn't really pay attention to the bill, but I thought it was high after 15 years of not paying for water. We had a water meter in the newer house. But after becoming aware of mustachianism and wanting to save even more, I started to shower shorter, turning off the tap when soaping in my hair and washing myself with a cloth more often instead of showering. What annoyed me was that the warm water source was a long distance from the shower, so I flushed 3 liters of cold water before taking a short, warm shower. Likewise with the kitchen. The house just didn't have a smart layout.
I only run washing machines when the are very full and my machine has a high load capacity. And DH showers seldom. We don't have children.
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I am on private well and septic, so no idea how much we use. We don’t pay for the water but the pump uses electricity to get it out of the ground. We also have an electric hot water heater so I try to conserve the hot water by using cold for laundry and taking shorter showers. (I only do 2 loads of laundry per week for 2 adults and 2 small kids, and we run the dish washer about 2x/week also). We get the septic pumped every 3 years and it costs about $250. There was one winter when the line froze and we had to get it pumped more frequently until the ground thawed, so we really had to conserve water. We haven’t had to do any maintenance to the well yet.
We have a high water table and a sump that runs all the time so I divert sump pump water for watering the garden and filling our swimming pool when we had one.
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Our water is averaged out over 95 homes so we do not see individual usage but our bill is between $48 and $55 dollars per month.
When we are on the road in the camper we average 8 gallons per day :)
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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It is shocking to hear that people use potable water to water grass. Every house should ideally have a double circuit, one for potable water in the kitchen and one for other use.
Even in drought prone areas, the only people I've known to have non-potable water access in their house have been "crazy environmentalists". It just doesn't seem to be a thing in the US. It should be.
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You know how I can tell you're in the west?
Here in New England, we have more water than we know what to do with. A couple decades ago, the state mandated separate water meters on every home. My hometown city sued the state to stop this requirement, where cities and towns in the western part of the state has so much water, they've never needed meters and adding them added un-necessary cost. I remember annual bills for water of $15 at my parents' house, which included watering the lawn and winter flooding of our ice rink many times. Once the meters were added, regardless of how much water was used, the bill became $15 for the water and $3 for the meter.
I get that the west has water shortages. Too many people with limited water and all. But the whole country doesn't have this problem.
It's not only about enough water.
Treating water takes a water treatment plant and chemicals and electricity and employees. The more water used, the more money spent.
That might be less expensive than water meters and billing software but that depends on how responsible the water users are. Personally, I'd hate to be paying the same as my neighbor in city taxes when they're filling a pool and I take navy showers.
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It is shocking to hear that people use potable water to water grass. Every house should ideally have a double circuit, one for potable water in the kitchen and one for other use.
Even in drought prone areas, the only people I've known to have non-potable water access in their house have been "crazy environmentalists". It just doesn't seem to be a thing in the US. It should be.
My father didn't use to be an environmentalist, but was frugal. He hang a floating pump in the pond behind the house when watering the garden. I have seen a Norwegian farmer doing the same thing. One could also catch rain water.
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We figure it comes to 30/person/day (8hcf on the last 62 day bill, but usually 7). However, we aren't sure where it is all going to. We do one load of laundry for the two of us once a week. Our roommate generally does 4 loads at a time, once a month, so about the same useage (or, twice the useage per person, actually)
DH and I let it mellow, take rare showers, running the water for only a few minutes each. The roommate does not take any conservation steps that we are aware of. According to our rough calculations based on the bills from before she moved in (not enough to get an average) and what we use, it seems that she uses about half again as much as the two of us put together.
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2 adults, 2 teenage daughters. Last year we used 101 m3, which averages to about 73 gallons a day. Our appliances are relatively new, we have a low flow shower that is used efficiently, and we try to be aware of water usage. We could be more careful about washing clothes, and I would really like one of those Japanese toilets where the water from the sink is used for flushing. But with two persons with IBS, there is a limit of how low we can get our water usage.
This year we've already used 83 m3, so if it keeps up we will end at 102 gallons a day. The difference is due to:
-Covid has forced us to be at home all the time.
-We have established a garden this year, and it took us a while to get the rainwater system up and running. I think we have spent a few 1000 liters watering in seedlings in May and June.
Hopefully, it averages out, and we end up well below 100 gallons a day by the end of the year.
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It is shocking to hear that people use potable water to water grass. Every house should ideally have a double circuit, one for potable water in the kitchen and one for other use.
Even in drought prone areas, the only people I've known to have non-potable water access in their house have been "crazy environmentalists". It just doesn't seem to be a thing in the US. It should be.
My father didn't use to be an environmentalist, but was frugal. He hang a floating pump in the pond behind the house when watering the garden. I have seen a Norwegian farmer doing the same thing. One could also catch rain water.
We have rain barrels, but in some states it is illegal to collect rainwater. I remember a case of an Oregon man going to jail, though perhaps it was a massive quantity?
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It is shocking to hear that people use potable water to water grass. Every house should ideally have a double circuit, one for potable water in the kitchen and one for other use.
Even in drought prone areas, the only people I've known to have non-potable water access in their house have been "crazy environmentalists". It just doesn't seem to be a thing in the US. It should be.
I know the city of Grand Junction, Colorado, has "canal rights" for their residents and most people in the town have a non-potable faucet for their yards. Definitely not a crazy environmental place. Not sure if it's a grandfathered in thing or just standard practice, but every house there I've visited had it.
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It is shocking to hear that people use potable water to water grass. Every house should ideally have a double circuit, one for potable water in the kitchen and one for other use.
Even in drought prone areas, the only people I've known to have non-potable water access in their house have been "crazy environmentalists". It just doesn't seem to be a thing in the US. It should be.
I know the city of Grand Junction, Colorado, has "canal rights" for their residents and most people in the town have a non-potable faucet for their yards. Definitely not a crazy environmental place. Not sure if it's a grandfathered in thing or just standard practice, but every house there I've visited had it.
That's awesome. I hope it catches on in other places.
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I can't find my latest water bill, but I had my meter replaced last year and it says we have averaged in the 150 gpd range for three adults and three young children. Low through the winter and then much higher this spring and summer. Water here is insultingly inexpensive and people still complain about the cost. It is considered excessively high if people have to pay $1,000 per year for drinking water. Often our systems bill on flat rates due to lack of meters, but also because these systems need a minimum amount of money and if people used less water they would just have to pay more for each unit. I think I probably pay around $350 for a year's worth of high quality drinking water delivered with consistent and adquate pressure 365 days a year with no more than 12 hours of water outage a year.
Public water system's in my state are required to be able to providea minimum 60 gpd/person for a residence. This proves to be a tricky metric to meet when businesses and industry are served on a water system, but it is consistently higher than actual residential use.
I have an intimate understanding of how the drinking water gets to my house and the other locations within my water system. The water is from a surface source, so there is no shortage, though it does cost money to treat we are lucky in that most of our system is served by gravity, so we don't pay large pumping costs. Where I am in Northern New England we do have water system's that are effected by drought. Usually systems with stream intakes and springs.
Much of the cost of delivering water to homes is in the buried infrastructure. Replacing about 4 miles of 50-100 year old water mains runs the same cost as replacing the 20 year old treatment facility. So to deliver non-potable water is not considered economical, my system serving about 7,000 people has over 50 miles of distribution main. I often think it is the right thing to do to provide non potable water, but the logistics are tricky and I don't trust most people to not drink it. Our systems are oversized many times in order to provide adequate water for fire protection.
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Good for you. I use ~85 gallons per day, just by myself.
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We have more than enough water, but as several others have mentioned, cleaning and distributing water is energy consuming and expensive. In one of the neighbouring municipalities, 30 % of the public electricity consumption is tied to water, most of it pumping treated water and sewage. They have several people employed to hunt for leaks, because it saves money in the long run.
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It looks like average distribution costs for pumping water are about 0.370 kWh/m3 with areas having surface water and gravity distribution systems being about half that cost. That works out to about 1.5 kWh per thousand gallons in an average areas, or 0.5-1.0 kWh per thousand in areas where good surface water is plentiful. Using the national average of about 13 cents per kWh, it costs about about $5 a year in electricity to pump water to a house using 150 gallons a day where water is plentiful.
https://www.esmap.org/sites/esmap.org/files/FINAL_EECI-WWU_TR001-12_Resized.pdf (https://www.esmap.org/sites/esmap.org/files/FINAL_EECI-WWU_TR001-12_Resized.pdf)
Of course, there's also energy usage with treating wastewater, but water outdoors doesn't get treated so a lot depends on how the water is used.
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It is shocking to hear that people use potable water to water grass. Every house should ideally have a double circuit, one for potable water in the kitchen and one for other use.
Even in drought prone areas, the only people I've known to have non-potable water access in their house have been "crazy environmentalists". It just doesn't seem to be a thing in the US. It should be.
Here in rural Northern California, our water utility has some 'ditch water' pipes with non potable water coming directly from the reservoir that some old properties are grandfathered into. The water is not metered at all and the connection is very cheap
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When we lived in the midwest the utility had a minimum billing of 9,000 gallons per quarter. We would usually go over by a tiny bit in the summer quarter when we watered the lawn a LOT. Other than that we were always below the minimum usage, but I really didn't track by how much.
Now in the NE, with 2 adults and 2 kids we use between 9-10k gallons per quarter. I am told this is less than half of the "typical" usage. We don't necessarily go out of our way to conserve, but we don't water the lawn here, and we only shower every other day.
There is no shortage of water here, and the pricing doesn't really push you to conserve - we pay $45/quarter for water.
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When we lived in the midwest the utility had a minimum billing of 9,000 gallons per quarter. We would usually go over by a tiny bit in the summer quarter when we watered the lawn a LOT. Other than that we were always below the minimum usage, but I really didn't track by how much.
Now in the NE, with 2 adults and 2 kids we use between 9-10k gallons per quarter. I am told this is less than half of the "typical" usage. We don't necessarily go out of our way to conserve, but we don't water the lawn here, and we only shower every other day.
There is no shortage of water here, and the pricing doesn't really push you to conserve - we pay $45/quarter for water.
We use 8k a quarter, but it costs us $50/month.
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Behold the past five years of water usage for two (as of yet unretired) adults, plus cats --
(https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRCrXXQGao_yGp97HAiDSXoyCLee3c0aCaiImRzA1-OJdvRDLc6NCsjDYqSVuTyicfczZ5ysQc8VhGJ/pubchart?oid=1383187397&format=image)
It looks like we typically use between 500 and 1000 gallons per month, with the average over the last 3 years being ~700 gallons per month, or 23 gallons per day.
(You can totally see the one summer when we tried to have/water a garden, before subsequently giving up on that endeavor, heh.)
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When we lived in the midwest the utility had a minimum billing of 9,000 gallons per quarter. We would usually go over by a tiny bit in the summer quarter when we watered the lawn a LOT. Other than that we were always below the minimum usage, but I really didn't track by how much.
Now in the NE, with 2 adults and 2 kids we use between 9-10k gallons per quarter. I am told this is less than half of the "typical" usage. We don't necessarily go out of our way to conserve, but we don't water the lawn here, and we only shower every other day.
There is no shortage of water here, and the pricing doesn't really push you to conserve - we pay $45/quarter for water.
It's amazing how much water prices vary. I moved from one midwest small city to another (both suburbs of a university city), the two literally touch each other.
My water bill tripled, my water usage did not change at all.
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It is shocking to hear that people use potable water to water grass. Every house should ideally have a double circuit, one for potable water in the kitchen and one for other use.
Even in drought prone areas, the only people I've known to have non-potable water access in their house have been "crazy environmentalists". It just doesn't seem to be a thing in the US. It should be.
My father didn't use to be an environmentalist, but was frugal. He hang a floating pump in the pond behind the house when watering the garden. I have seen a Norwegian farmer doing the same thing. One could also catch rain water.
We have rain barrels, but in some states it is illegal to collect rainwater. I remember a case of an Oregon man going to jail, though perhaps it was a massive quantity?
I wonder if that could have been because the utility was one of the ones that assumed water in = water out for sewer billing, and claimed that they were illegally using the sewer system and not paying for it. Just guessing though, no idea on the details.
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In western states, the regulations against rain water collection often have to do with complex water rights agreements. If John Muir collects rain water, it doesn't become the ground water that Farmer John has the rights to, much less what is needed for the showers for all those Hollywood stars alternating between workouts and shoots.
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It is shocking to hear that people use potable water to water grass. Every house should ideally have a double circuit, one for potable water in the kitchen and one for other use.
Even in drought prone areas, the only people I've known to have non-potable water access in their house have been "crazy environmentalists". It just doesn't seem to be a thing in the US. It should be.
I know the city of Grand Junction, Colorado, has "canal rights" for their residents and most people in the town have a non-potable faucet for their yards. Definitely not a crazy environmental place. Not sure if it's a grandfathered in thing or just standard practice, but every house there I've visited had it.
That's awesome. I hope it catches on in other places.
For what it's worth, when I lived in the suburbs of Salt lake City we had non-potable water for use in the yard. It's quite common there.
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We use about 5000 gallons per month including multiple daily showers and yard sprinkler. My problem is I can’t convince the city to bill me. Their system is broken and won’t generate a bill going on three years. Eventually we may have to pay I suppose.
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We used 4000 gallons last month (129 gal/day) with four adults, two kitchens (we've basically turned our house into a duplex with two college-age kids living on one side), and a large koi pond that gets periodically topped off. We live in the southeastern US, where rainfall averages 56 inches/year.
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We use about 5000 gallons per month including multiple daily showers and yard sprinkler. My problem is I can’t convince the city to bill me. Their system is broken and won’t generate a bill going on three years. Eventually we may have to pay I suppose.
Wow! That could be a huge bill if the city ever figures it out. I hope you post what happens here if and when they do.
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We use about 5000 gallons per month including multiple daily showers and yard sprinkler. My problem is I can’t convince the city to bill me. Their system is broken and won’t generate a bill going on three years. Eventually we may have to pay I suppose.
Wow! That could be a huge bill if the city ever figures it out. I hope you post what happens here if and when they do.
I just closed the account and they did figure it out. Good news is they only billed me for half the period and do not apply an interest or penalties. Bad news is they used the total figure and applied it all in the the month of October, so it get's charged at a much higher rate to apparently very high usage for that month. I complained and they will correct it, lowering the total by about half.
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living on our sailboat with no pressure water, usually jumping overboard for showers so only using fresh water to rinse (3 gallon sprayer lasts us 4 showers), laundry by hand once a week or so - we could go 6 weeks on 120 gallons. So 3 gallons a day?
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Our family of 3 uses 85 gallons per day, on average. Twice a year we receive an email from the city saying "Way to go, WaterSaver! You ranked in the top 20%." Go us!
For reference, we bathe every other day, 1.28GPF toilet, front-load washing machine, and of course, we practice "if it's yellow, let it mellow." We do have a garden that requires plenty of hose watering in the summer.
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In western states, the regulations against rain water collection often have to do with complex water rights agreements. If John Muir collects rain water, it doesn't become the ground water that Farmer John has the rights to, much less what is needed for the showers for all those Hollywood stars alternating between workouts and shoots.
Frequently due to mining or agriculture. The person at the "end" of the stream has a legal right to X amount of water, and everyone up the chain is legally obligated to ensure that "last" person gets what they are entitled to. This is why rain barrels are often illegal. You don't have a legal right to that water unlike all the people "downstream". Sounds kinda crazy but does make sense as otherwise water would be diverted or otherwise used up well before all the people downstream get a vital resource.
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In western states, the regulations against rain water collection often have to do with complex water rights agreements. If John Muir collects rain water, it doesn't become the ground water that Farmer John has the rights to, much less what is needed for the showers for all those Hollywood stars alternating between workouts and shoots.
Frequently due to mining or agriculture. The person at the "end" of the stream has a legal right to X amount of water, and everyone up the chain is legally obligated to ensure that "last" person gets what they are entitled to. This is why rain barrels are often illegal. You don't have a legal right to that water unlike all the people "downstream". Sounds kinda crazy but does make sense as otherwise water would be diverted or otherwise used up well before all the people downstream get a vital resource.
The Colorado (state) has (or used to have) restrictions on rain water collection.
I believe the Colorado River is now oversold. Various Native American tribes have a lot of the senior rights for the water but have never needed what they're legally obligated to take. If they can sell their water, some upstream communities are going to be shorted.
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We rented out our house for 5 months while we were traveling earlier this year and just checked our water bill to see how the tenants did (3 adults and 2 young children 3 and under). They used 177 gallons per day in the middle of spring, which our water utility says is around average (164 gallons per day) for our household lot size and number of people. However, last year the same time (our family of 2 adults and 2 school age children) used about 70 gallons per day so we are well below average. Our kids (and adults) don't shower everyday and try to minimize water usage.
We live in the SF Bay Area and took out our grass a few years ago and have a relatively small lots size (~4000 sq ft) with drought tolerant plants and a planter bed for veggies. Our water rate is $4/unit of water which is 748 gallons or half of a cent per gallon.
I'd be interested to hear how much water your household uses and how many occupants, and details about your yard.
The average water consumption per person in Belgium is 95 liters or about 25 us gallons per day. So even by Belgian standards, you'd be slightly under average. Our own last water bill was 82 m³ for 380 days, with 3 adults on average. That translates to roughly 19 US gallons per person per day.
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OK, you got me curious.
My last bill was for 11CCF for 62 days. If I did the conversions right that works to about 133 gallons per day, and there are three of us here (plus two other people who pass through from time to time), so about 44 gallons per person per day.
Our potable water rate is $1.4674 per CCF, so basically free. My "customer charge" and some random fee total $21.61 but the water itself was only $16.14.
Lot size is standard - 0.138 acres or 6,011 square feet total, of which half is probably consumed by the house and driveway. But, as is quite common around here, we have pressurized irrigation for the yard, so that usage is excluded from both the general house usage above and consequently not reflected in the sewer bill either.
Pressurized irrigation is even cheaper - it was $47.07 for the entire year this year, and I watered my lawn three times a day for about six months. I don't think we really have pumping charges as it is all gravity fed from the mountains and a local reservoir through irrigation canals and then laterals. We do have a pump house for our subdivision of maybe 80 houses that uses electricity, but that is owned and maintained by the HOA and paid for collectively by the residents somehow I'm sure. The water is also completely untreated as far a I know.
@MilesTeg, it works exactly opposite around here. Irrigation water rights started out connected with the land - you got so much per acre per year. The can be separated from the land and sold off, but that is rarely done as they are quite useful to have and helps the land retain its value. But it's seniority based: in years when we have low water, the senior right holders get theirs and the junior right holders have to get by without. The ditch riders know the water rights order and they shift the water in the irrigation canals and laterals as needed. The diverters and such are under lock and key, and there are severe penalties for messing with the irrigation water. This makes sense to me because there is still a lot of farmland and ranch land around here, and the farmers and ranchers rely on their water in order to grow their crops and provide for their livestock.
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290L or 77 US gallons per day for a family of 3 (2 adults, 1 child). We've had water restrictions for the last 9 months so usage may increase slightly now the restrictions are loosened and it's now summer so slightly more garden usage.
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We figure it comes to 30/person/day (8hcf on the last 62 day bill, but usually 7). However, we aren't sure where it is all going to. We do one load of laundry for the two of us once a week. Our roommate generally does 4 loads at a time, once a month, so about the same useage (or, twice the useage per person, actually)
DH and I let it mellow, take rare showers, running the water for only a few minutes each. The roommate does not take any conservation steps that we are aware of. According to our rough calculations based on the bills from before she moved in (not enough to get an average) and what we use, it seems that she uses about half again as much as the two of us put together.
With a drought in the West, I decided it was time to revisit this. Without the roommate we are down to 25 gallons per person per day. Sort of: we were traveling half of Nov and all of Dec, so that bill was 1 hcf. Not sure what the next bill will look like: the water heater burst and the shutoff valve just slowed the problem, we were still trickling for several days*, then the kitchen sink clogged and we dumped gallons and gallons of hot water trying to clear it and more yet once it was cleared to try to make sure it doesn't happen again, and we have had guests for most of the two month period.
*Handyman was flabbergasted that water conservation was more important to us than having hot water. Insisted his job is to make sure we have service, not to worry about the damage being done by the leakage, and a hundred other excuses why we absolutely should not touch the cutoff or turn off the broken water heater (we did, but as above, it didn't help that much. At least we weren't heating the water that was pouring out, like he insisted we should).