Understanding Your Water Bill and Usage Habits

In order to more fully understand all the various bills I am paying I turned my attention to the water and sewer bill. I pulled out my paper bill and examined what exactly they were charging me for. Of course, I recommend that you do the same. Below are the charges on my bill:

Water usage charge
This is the metered water usage. It's calculated in water units, with one unit being equal to 100 cubic feet (748 gallons) of water. This charge is directly related to how much water I use.

Water customer charge
This fee covers maintenance and infrastructure costs of the water company. This fee is also completely static and thus doesn't change with my water usage.

Wastewater customer charge
Another fee covering infrastructure and maintenance, this time for the sewer system. As you might expect, nothing I do is going to change this part of the bill.

State mandated water charge
This fee is mandated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and covers the costs of all required drinking water testing.

Fire hydrant facilities charge
This charge is assigned by the city and works to ensure that the fire hydrant system remains in order.

Storm water utility charge
My utility company bills this fee to me, but the money raised goes towards my city's public works department to maintain and improve water resources.

State and local taxes
Got to have the taxes, that way the government gets their cut.

And last but not least we have payment options. Nothing surprising, just check, credit card and online billing to bank account or credit card.

Having covered the charges, it would be remiss of me not to go over the bill and see if there was any other useful information buried there, but the bill left me wanting. So I headed to the website to see if there was anything of interest to be found there. Here's what I found.

You can request a water usage history where they company emails you a report of how much water you used for the last year. I really think that this should be on the bill proper. That way people will be able to look back at previous months and know when those peak usage times will be.

The company also offers water service insurance. Basically this covers damage to the water works not included in your homeowner's insurance. Personally I would be skeptical about purchasing this, especially if you never really took the time to read over your homeowner's insurance.

Lastly, the website offers a number of tips related to water conservation for you to browse through.

Residential Water Use Explained

I decided to continue my exploration of water usage by looking at just how the average residence uses water. Here's a basic breakdown of where the average household's water goes.

Outdoor - 59%
Indoor - 34%
Leaks - 5%

Not surprising outdoor water usage constitutes the majority of our water usage. So what is all this water being used for? Mostly lawn and garden maintenance. Hence why many cities have restrictions on when and how often residents can water their lawns.

Surprisingly leaks account for around 5%. However, I should point out that there is wide variability between residences with regard to water leakage. In other words, some leak a little, whereas others leak a lot.

Indoor water usage breaks down as follows:

Toilet - 11%
Washing machine - 9&
Shower - 7%
Faucet - 6%
Bath - 1%
Dishwasher - 1%
Other -1 %

It's interesting because the toilet, washing machine, faucets and shower all contributing substantially. The toilet is the biggest water user and thus the most attractive target for indoor water conservation efforts. However, eliminating wasteful water usage by the washing machine, shower and faucets may also yield significant savings.