House hold water usage

So I got a water bill from September to March and according to the electronic read out my family and I used 23,000 gallons of water, does this sound right?
I have three children my wife and I and my house is a one floor rancher, about 1,000 square foot.
How much water do you use?
I feel like I got it up the rear.

I would have to look but I think my family (2 parents, 2 kids) uses between 5000 and 8000 gallons per month. So, in the same ballpark as you.

My daughter and I about 2000- 3000 per month

Any leaks??

Toilet flushes, showers and baths, loads of clothes run through the washing machine, loads of dishes run through the dishwasher, watering the lawn, washing the car, etc... it all adds up...

I'm on a well out in the country, so I don't know exactly, but that's probably in the ballpark from what my sister has told me... We're actually higher out here since the cow's water trough is also on our well... (one of them anyway, the others are on my brother's and folks well at the other ends of the farm...)

Later! OL JR

Keep in mind the math... in my case, 4 people times one shower/bath per day per person at an average of 20 gallons is 80 gallons per day or 2400 gal per month right there. Then there's probably at least 10 flushes per day at 3 gallons per flush, that's in the ballpark of another 1000 gal/ month. It adds up quickly.

If you are speaking per month, you have a leak or something is very wrong. I don't use that much in the summer, and that includes 4 people's useage, watering the lawn 1/wk, drip hose around hous 1h/d, and topping off the pool (hose full blast for 20-30 m/wk) in >100 average high temps.

If you are talking about the entire 6-7 month period, you are model family for water conservation.

I use as much as I like because I have three Wells and one Hand Dug Well/Pond. My Property is on top of Cold Water Springs, so I have infinite Water, and never pay a Cent.

I got a huge H2O bill myself recently. I have since turned off the sprinklers completely. I now water the grass manually about 1 or 2 days a week. I am curious to see my next bill. But, without getting political, all the utilities keep going up due to terrible union contracts and such.

Kehoes23 said:

So I got a water bill from September to March and according to the electronic read out my family and I used 23,000 gallons of water, does this sound right?
I have three children my wife and I and my house is a one floor rancher, about 1,000 square foot.
How much water do you use?
I feel like I got it up the rear.

Click to expand...

Sean,
from Nov. 02 to Feb. 04 (94 days), We used 11,220 gallons

So who's getting hosed??? (pun intended)

The biggest waster of water in a typical older home is the toilet. Old toilets used 7.5 gallon of water per flush. New ones typically use 1.5 gallons.

Flushing an older toilet 5 times a day used 35 gallons of water. Flushing a new toilet 5 times a day uses 7.5 gallons. That alone saves 28 gallons per day per person or 80% of the water used to flush the toilet. Simply changing toilets can save a family of 4 about 40,880 gallons of water per year.

Newer shower heads use between 1 and 2 gallons per minute. Older shower heads could use up to 5 gallons per minutes. Changing the shower head takes 10 minutes and saves 60-80% of the water you used to use taking a shower. That's a minimum savings of 43,800 gallons of water per year for a family of 4.

The other big 2 savers are running full dishwashers and clothes washers. You save a factor of 2 in water by washing a full dishwasher load instead of 2 half full loads. Same is true for clothes washers, especially the new energy saving ones. They do use less water but do a bad job with small loads, and won't get the soap out unless you run an extra rinse cycle. A full load using a long cycle warm wash followed by 2 long rinses with cold water will your clothes clean and minimize water use.

Today a family of 4 can use over 100,000 gallons less water a year than we did 30 years ago simply by using new water efficient appliances properly.

Bob

How does this water bill compare to your bills in the past?

Compare it to past bills?

Yes, the best way to know if something is wrong is to check your past bills. My water bill prints a bar chart of the last 12 months, so you can see the period-to-period usage, which is nice. But my water utility also bills us on some kind of oddball cycle, so sometimes you have a whole extra month on one bill, which can really stand out!

If your water usage for one period is much higher than similar periods, and you didn't do anything significant, like fill a pool, then you probably have a leak. One of the most common leaks is a toilet leak in which the toilet is "running." People do not think that adds up to much, but it really does. If your toilet makes a sound like water is running or you have one where you need to "jiggle the handle" to get it to refill properly, then you need to get it fixed. Sometimes the flap valve has just a small leak and you will hear the toilet run water every few minutes and then stop. That's wasting water.

Unfortunately, other kinds of leaks can be harder to detect. I just recently repaired a drip irrigation system in which a tree root had busted a PVC pipe several feet underground. usually drip is very efficient, but in this case, when the irrigation was on, probably hundreds of gallons of water were being released through that underground break. I didn't notice it until plants further down the line started getting dry, and a muddy spot seemed to persist around the area of the tree.

One way to find out if you have a leak is to turn off all the faucets, showers, washing machines. etc. in the house, so you would not expect any water to be flowing, and then go out and watch your meter to see if it is showing any flow. If so, you have a leak. If you can't tell, you may be able to check with your water utility, and they might check it for you.

If you do not have a leak, and your water usage is still high, then the biggest user of water in a household (at least here in the west), is landscaping. You can have the same exact house, with the same exact number of people, and the water usage can be vastly different based solely on how the home is landscaped and irrigated. With the drought we are facing here in CA, everyone should replace some, if not all, of their lawn with drought tolerant plants, and put them on drip irrigation. It's not difficult or expensive, and it looks great and cuts down on maintenance, mowing, fertilizer, weeding, etc., saving water, time, money, and yard waste.

My children don't like to bathe...I think I get a credit for that on my bill (kind of like a solar panel feeding back into the grid).

Just kidding. We were on city water for about 10 yrs. Your usage over that period of time doesn't sound too far off. I once had a water softener that had a combo valve and motor that was nearly dead. It would stay on the backwash cycle forever and waste a ton of water at 3am. It took me 3 billing cycles and the water company to replace the meter before I figured it out.

If you can run your dishwasher and washing machine during off peak hours, say after 10-11pm that will save money. The utilities charge less while you sleep, so you will save on your electric and water.

Your information in the OP equates to around 153 gallons of water per person, per day.

It looks like I am using about 7,000 to 9,000 per month. It's a little wierd because the bill is in "units" which are 748 gallons each, and it is billed in approximately 2 month periods. My low for the year was 19 units, and high was 24, for a 2-month bill.

goldlizard said:

If you can run your dishwasher and washing machine during off peak hours, say after 10-11pm that will save money. The utilities charge less while you sleep, so you will save on your electric and water.

Click to expand...

For some utilities, that is true for electricity, but not for water.

Thanks every one for posting on this, makes me feel a little better about the water bill that I got.

I live alone and use a bit less than 2,000 gallons a month. I seem to average around 65 gallons a day. I do not water my lawn. The size of your house doesn't have much impact on water use. The number of people in the household has more to do with water use.

bobkrech said:

The biggest waster of water in a typical older home is the toilet. Old toilets used 7.5 gallon of water per flush. New ones typically use 1.5 gallons.

Flushing an older toilet 5 times a day used 35 gallons of water. Flushing a new toilet 5 times a day uses 7.5 gallons. That alone saves 28 gallons per day per person or 80% of the water used to flush the toilet. Simply changing toilets can save a family of 4 about 40,880 gallons of water per year.

Newer shower heads use between 1 and 2 gallons per minute. Older shower heads could use up to 5 gallons per minutes. Changing the shower head takes 10 minutes and saves 60-80% of the water you used to use taking a shower. That's a minimum savings of 43,800 gallons of water per year for a family of 4.

The other big 2 savers are running full dishwashers and clothes washers. You save a factor of 2 in water by washing a full dishwasher load instead of 2 half full loads. Same is true for clothes washers, especially the new energy saving ones. They do use less water but do a bad job with small loads, and won't get the soap out unless you run an extra rinse cycle. A full load using a long cycle warm wash followed by 2 long rinses with cold water will your clothes clean and minimize water use.

Today a family of 4 can use over 100,000 gallons less water a year than we did 30 years ago simply by using new water efficient appliances properly.

Bob

Click to expand...

I don't mind the water saving toilets (so long as they work well-- some do and some don't...) I installed a handicapped toilet for my Dad in his house a couple years ago, and it was so nice I replaced ours as well, since the "standard" height toilets are a little low for me... it's not a particularly strong flusher though. When they got their new house and moved to Shiner, first thing he had me do was get a new handicapped toilet and install it for him... it's a different model, and it's very impressive... flushes like a rocket blast... just a regular gravity toilet, but a large trapway and excellent water passage design I suppose, but it flushes almost as quickly as those pressure fed toilets typical in Walmart bathrooms and most commercial facilities...

The shower heads I refuse to put up with though... I want a good, hot, FORCEFUL shower, not some limp dribbler of a shower head. Of course you can't buy a GOOD shower head anymore that produces enough water volume or force for a good shower, so the first thing I do when I replace a shower head is either yank the water saver crapola piece out of the shower head or fittings, or drill it out, as the case may be.

Our dishwasher hasn't worked for years, so I do it all manually. Our clothes washer is slowly dying (it's 13 years old and was used when we bought it) and I DO NOT like the new machines-- I'd NEVER buy one of those "high efficiency" machines-- read too many bad things about them. All the new washing machines are "timerless" in that they use a digital circuitboard instead of the traditional timers, and have a lot of safety locks and other goofy features that IMHO really screw up how they work... thing I'll get a used model that is older to replace our machine. About the only good thing about the new machines is that they spin at extremely high speeds, so that the clothes come out barely damp, which reduces drying time. However, I hang our clothes on a clothesline 90% of the time (unless it's raining) and thus our drying costs are ZERO. Plus, things smell MUCH better and the clothes last much longer not getting baked all the time in the dryer...

THE single biggest waste of water is watering the lawn... ABSOLUTE waste of resources IMHO... lawns should be planted with natural plants adapted for the region/climate where you live, to eliminate or at least minimize the need for watering. If I lived in town, I'd probably just cover the entire yard with pea gravel and be done with it... no need for watering or mowing... (another huge waste of fuel and time).

To each his own I guess, though... Later! OL JR

luke strawwalker said:

However, I hang our clothes on a clothesline 90% of the time

Click to expand...

I wish I could do that, if I tried to clothesline my laundry in Maryland I am pretty sure it would take a week for everything to dry out thoroughly during the June-September high summer season.

Mrs. OD and I paid for 9 units which is 6732 gallons for the last month which is about right for this time of year.

In the summer our water usage goes up to 10,000 gallons or so. I keep telling her to quit hosing down the plants/sidewalks/etc because we have a drip watering system for the plants and a sprinkler system for the front and back lawns. The leaf blower is far more effective on the sidewalks.

bobkrech said:

The biggest waster of water in a typical older home is the toilet. Old toilets used 7.5 gallon of water per flush. New ones typically use 1.5 gallons.
Bob

Click to expand...

That 7.5 GPF sounded a tad high to me so I did a bit of surfing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flush_toilet#U.S._standards_for_new_toilets
Once I get my KNO3 compost heap going I think my H2O bill will drop drastically. :duck:

luke strawwalker said:

I don't mind the water saving toilets (so long as they work well-- some do and some don't...) I installed a handicapped toilet for my Dad in his house a couple years ago, and it was so nice I replaced ours as well, since the "standard" height toilets are a little low for me... it's not a particularly strong flusher though. When they got their new house and moved to Shiner, first thing he had me do was get a new handicapped toilet and install it for him... it's a different model, and it's very impressive... flushes like a rocket blast... just a regular gravity toilet, but a large trapway and excellent water passage design I suppose, but it flushes almost as quickly as those pressure fed toilets typical in Walmart bathrooms and most commercial facilities...

To each his own I guess, though... Later! OL JR

Click to expand...

Is it an American Standard Champion 4? My family got those and they are amazing. I have never once needed to flush them twice, ever. There are newer toilets that use 1.2 gallons instead of 1.6, but when they clog, there goes the water savings.

bobkrech said:

The biggest waster of water in a typical older home is the toilet. Old toilets used 7.5 gallon of water per flush. New ones typically use 1.5 gallons.

Click to expand...

They're down to 1.28 gallons now.

Newer shower heads use between 1 and 2 gallons per minute.

Click to expand...

The 1 gpm heads are like taking a shower in a mist.

CarVac said:

Is it an American Standard Champion 4? My family got those and they are amazing. I have never once needed to flush them twice, ever. There are newer toilets that use 1.2 gallons instead of 1.6, but when they clog, there goes the water savings.

Click to expand...

The Toto 1.28 gpf toilets work amazingly well. Toto was the company that figured out that changing the flush valve opening from 2" to 3" made a huge difference. 3" is pretty much the standard now.

There are toilets now days that have an air bladder inside the tank to have very powerful flushes like a commercial toilet. Somehow they use the water flow to pressurize the tank. One of the local Boy Scout camps uses a lot of these because boys were constantly plugging the old toilets.

I've had Kohler low flow toilets for 12 years and they have only plugged a few times over those years.

If you have an older toilet and cannot afford a new one, take the lid off the tank and partially fill it with river rock. Your toilet will use much less water per flush.

That's a California trick to saving water attributable to the Department of Water Resources, my old employer.

hball55 said:

If you have an older toilet and cannot afford a new one, take the lid off the tank and partially fill it with river rock. Your toilet will use much less water per flush.

That's a California trick to saving water attributable to the Department of Water Resources, my old employer.

Click to expand...

Did you work at the Dam?

Retired from the state myself.