Thread: Blooming Water Bill

Exceptionally interesting thread.

By comparison, our water bill includes water, some administrative overhead, sewer, trash collection and fire medical services. The fire medical is ambulance services and completely voluntary at $5 per month. Our bill is paid to the city.

The monthly charges are:
$11 for the meter and hook up
$9 to $12 for consumption but we have synthetic turf
$11 for sewer
$19 for trash collection
$5 for the ambulance service

To the meter and consumption charges a 5% tax is added.

A neighbor with a pool told me that to fill his pool the consumption charge was about $260. Which is about what I would expect. I'm assuming that your bills for water are annual and not monthly. Mine would be between $600 and $700 per year. OMG! Please tell me that your water bill is NOT a monthly charge!

Our bills are typically quarterly

I have just read in the paper that SA Water are going to give a once off reduction in the cost of water (the nominal cut would be around 3 per cent) and then allow it to increase again with the rate of inflation over the next two years. The flip side to this is that the sewer costs are going up initially (up 1.7 per cent - but adjusted for inflation the amount would be around 4 per cent) and then they too will increase with inflation.

So in the wash up water is again cheaper (reducing the incentives to save water) and sewer prices (which are based on your property value) are going up. Given the water costs are such a small part of the bill and the sewer is larger the total bill will still be increasing despite a reduction in costs. Once again SA Water can pencil in their profits early given the more expensive sewer is linked to property value and cant fluctuate with use.

SA Water's total profit in the 2011-12 financial year was $317 million, $109 million above that expected in its budget.

Well access charges aside, I just got my latest bill. I'm in a townhouse on a shared meter. Somehow one or several units in the block have contributed to a huge amount of usage, and quadrupled the water usage across the entire block. I think it's time for sub metering. Can't really afford $550 a quarter for just water. Beer would be cheaper.

I am struggling to see how one thing alone (other than a leak) could have caused this. My only conclusion if it isn't a leak, is that several of the units have leaking taps, toilets and hot water systems, as well as wasteful tenants (like the silly old bat next door who hoses debris off the driveway and waters plants every day, even if it has rained).

All of my washers are changed regularly and my hot water system is new but I doubt my neighbors are maintaining their own things. Hence why I'm very keen now to push for sub metering. We can then see who really is wasteful and who isn't. Well I'm off now to get a second job to pay for my last bill...