Posted: Fri Mar 23, 07 10:00 am Post subject: Saving on your water bill
I've got what I hope will be a useful article on how you can cut your water bills in the pipe line (pun)
A picture paints a thousand words, especially in my case, so I'll be relying on plenty of photographs.
alison Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 29 Oct 2004 Posts: 12918 Location: North Devon
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 07 11:06 am Post subject:
Bodger
That sounds like it could be really useful. I look forward to seeing it.
one of the best ways to cut the bill is if you have soakaways for surface water. Discovered a couple of yrs ago that we were being charged for the surface water "recovery" even though the downpipes (that don't end in water butts ) go to soakaways...and a form filling exercise and a couple of drawings later we save about �45/yr
Unmetered customers paying on the old RV basis or some assesed charge should check:
1: the right information is being used e.g. correct RV, category band etc.
2: if they are connected for surface water drainage, unless told the water and sewerage company wont know.
3: that they actually are connected to the sewage system
Metered customers should check 2 and 3 as well and can then make savings by reducing consumption as I'm sure Mr Bodger will show.
The simplest thing for metered customers to do is to check for leaks. Turn everything off, take a reading, go away for a while, come back and take a reading.
I'm not going to cover this in my bit but we managed to get our water bill down in this way. Our sewage rates were being assessed from our metered water useage and we got a sizeable reduction when we apealed and pointed out to them that a percentage of the water was going both in and out of our horses, cattle, pigs chickens etc and that we didn't allow them to use the Loos.
It saved us quite a bit off the bill.
Another good point. It's assumed that 95% into the house goes down the drain. If you can show this is not the case you may get a reduction though i suspect most companies would agitate for you to get a field supply where you only pay for the water.
dougal
Joined: 15 Jan 2005 Posts: 7184 Location: South Kent
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 07 3:27 pm Post subject:
DEADLINE
Southern Water (dunno about any others) work on a *financial* year for their "surface water drainage rebate".
An application made in the next week therefore is worth �22 more than an application made the week after...
If you have your own well which you can have in your garden you can take 30 cubic metres of water from it probably the same aqua water as your supplier with out paying water rates, beat that.
Here in the West of Ireland, we are just charged with what water we use through the tap. We are allowed 1,200 gallons per year for 100 Euros, then charged extra for the rest. It is a veritable minefield.
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