My water bill jumped a lot!

roundthebend

I had a surprise call from Anglian Water last week, their pro-active team letting me know that a recent meter reading they took suggests that we've used significantly more water than in the previous 12 months. About 100m³ more water to be precise.

We're a family of 4 (kids are pretty much adults) in a detached house with a rear lawn. I did water the grass a bit more last year, and I've been showering at home rather than at work. And we did hire a hot tub but it only needed filling once. Oh, and we had a dripping pipe in the airing cupboard.

I've just turned everything off in the house and the meter outside didn't detect any water flow so it would seem that we don't have a leak anywhere after the meter.

I can't imagine how we've used that much extra water, but it seems I'm gonna have to suck it up (not literally) and pay. It's about £300 extra. Ouch!

andy1839

Check your toilets.  If the cistern is leaking, and free flowing into the bowl occasionally it can use a lot more than you might realise. 

Particularly the newer long/short flush button ones that tend to stick once in a while. 

RiftAmps

andy1839 said:

Check your toilets.  If the cistern is leaking, and free flowing into the bowl occasionally it can use a lot more than you might realise. 

Particularly the newer long/short flush button ones that tend to stick once in a while. 

Exactly this.

Our toilet was in a constant state of mild-flushing after the cistern fill cut-off valve broke. The cistern just kept filling up and emptying down the overflow. We didn't realise for a long time until we queried the DD increases, you could barely see the water flowing and definitely could not hear it. It must have broken sometime after 21st March 2016

roundthebend

We've got 3 toilets in the house, and being a modern house they've all got the valves that are more prone to failure - cheap tat.

But we've had 2 of them replaced over 12 months ago, and we're pretty tuned into that. I suspect the constant drip in the airing cupboard could be our main culprit, along with me taking showers too.

ronnyb

Is that a smart meter they took the reading off? My electric smart meter was faulty and reading 10 times my normal use.

strtdv

roundthebend said:

We've got 3 toilets in the house, and being a modern house they've all got the valves that are more prone to failure - cheap tat.

But we've had 2 of them replaced over 12 months ago, and we're pretty tuned into that. I suspect the constant drip in the airing cupboard could be our main culprit, along with me taking showers too.

A drip would hardly count for 100 cubic metres though surely? 

Budgie

100m3! That’s 100 tonnes of water. That’s a hell of a drip. Have you noticed any lakes nearby that weren’t there the last time you had a bill. Got to be wrong or a major issue somewhere.

blobb

Just for comparison, the typical per capita water use in UK is something like 150 litres per head per day. So if you have used 100m3 more than usual that's 100,000 / 150 / 365 = 1.8 extra people living in your house. Every day. For a year.

Have you had relatives over?  

roundthebend

I'll check the figure, but pretty sure the lady said 100m³
Not a smart meter. It's not the end of the world, but I am going to be checking it more frequently and tracking how much is getting used/wasted.

boogieman

Yeah that’s not going to be caused by a weeping pipe. Either you’ve watered the lawns much more than you thought or there’s a problem lurking somewhere in the house. £300 extra is a hell of a lot of water to use...to put it in perspective  we’ve got a four bed, two bathroom house with a big garden that we water a lot in the summer. Our water bill for this year has just come through.. £28 a month (we’re on a meter now, it used to be £43 when it wasn’t... hooray for water meters!). 

Jalapeno

Might be an underground leak - noticed any greener spots on the lawn.

I very much doubt it's showers, teenage daughter ?  Baths every night ?

scrumhalf

They could have just cocked up.

I'm currently having fun with one of these numpty companies who, every year, send me a commercial waste invoice for my flat, then, when I call to complain, tell me that yes, it's their error and they will correct it and it won't happen again.

It happened in 2015, 2016 and 2017. I will be billing them for my time in sorting their crap out. A less legally-aware person might feel coerced into paying their bogus invoices after receiving one of their we're-going-to-get-the-bailiffs-onto-you letters.

roundthebend

Jalapeno said:

Might be an underground leak - noticed any greener spots on the lawn.

I very much doubt it's showers, teenage daughter ?  Baths every night ?

They suggested a number of possible causes including a leak outside of the property, but when I turned everything off indoors last night, the meter showed zero flow. So, I can't see how it's possible.

I've got 2 teenage boys, and they do like a long shower. Me too, I'll occasionally shave in the shower which is a stupid waste of water.

exocet

It most likely is showers....depending on the sort of shower that you have. I reckon that my shower delivers (consumes) 12 litres per minute so a 5 minute shower = 60 litres.....dawdle about and 100 litres goes down the plug hole.

roundthebend

exocet said:

It most likely is showers....depending on the sort of shower that you have. I reckon that my shower delivers (consumes) 12 litres per minute so a 5 minute shower = 60 litres.....dawdle about and 100 litres goes down the plug hole.

2 showers in the house, our heating system runs off the mains pressure so they chuck out a fair amount of water. Hence why they're so nice to stay in!

I'm going to measure the next 7 days of usage, then I'm going to ask my family to try and reduce it by taking short showers and we'll see what difference it makes.

axisus

They put a Smart meter in for our house. Didn't want it of course. They are monitoring it for a year so we know what the price will be, and it's going up by £400pa!!!!! F*** that!!!!  Most pissed off. I'm giving up showers, I'm just going to run naked around the garden when it rains.

grungebob

The leak would have to be after the meter if their claiming the meter is showing the increase. 
That is a significant increase in your normal usage of an extra  274 litres/day over the course of a year. 
I would challenge this purely from a common sense perspective and ask that the meter be verified. It’s not unknown for them to over/under read. 

exocet

roundthebend said:

exocet said:

It most likely is showers....depending on the sort of shower that you have. I reckon that my shower delivers (consumes) 12 litres per minute so a 5 minute shower = 60 litres.....dawdle about and 100 litres goes down the plug hole.

2 showers in the house, our heating system runs off the mains pressure so they chuck out a fair amount of water. Hence why they're so nice to stay in!

I'm going to measure the next 7 days of usage, then I'm going to ask my family to try and reduce it by taking short showers and we'll see what difference it makes.

I have a 210 litre mains pressure HW tank. My daughter has been known to pretty much exhaust that in a single "long shower"...that's Just Hot Water, most likely another 80 litres of cold water was mixed in as well......I've had words and now she does try to use a 3 minute type egg timer.