Unexplained high water bills - help!

I’d be taking a photo of the meter approx every hour, with a mobile phone next to it, with the time and date showing on the display.

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My bill is £56 pcm. Thought it was £45.

Single occupancy, kids weekends only. One shower a day. Washing machine 2 to 3 times a week. Dishwasher every other day.

Maybe the bill is correct. My water bill has nearly doubled as water company have put up costs.

@70sPete have you checked your rates. Have they gone up?

It seems to me you have no leaks and all other issues have been dealt with. Other than monitoring every 30 mins I don’t know what else to suggest to help your plight.

But, in fairness you have not done the 30 minute monitoring suggested by many.

I don’t see any monitoring apart from daily.

You need to be specific, and detail how long the showers are.

Like I say check your bills and see what the rates are as well. Something doesn’t seem right.

You need to get to the bottom of this. Everyone is trying to help you on this. Without continuous monitoring I don’t see how you can solve the issue.

Maybe the monitoring is a job too much for you, which I can understand, dependent on lifestyle.

My water bill has doubled almost with no changes as water company has whacked up bills.

The directors have got to be paid somehow.

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Yes. The infrastructure was meant to be dealt with but they splurged the money on paying Directors and upper management. I have heard it on the radio many times.

Don’t forget the dividends. Thames’s debts are broadly equal to the dividends paid since privatisation. The whole thing is a disgrace. And who pays? We do, the mugs who have no choice.

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Asset strippers are gonna asset strip.

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One utility that ought to be nationalised.

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Absolutely, difficult once done though. Edge of political so we should leave it there on that front!!! :rofl:

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In my view all infrastructure should be government owned and funded, any profit ploughed back in to improve services (of course run efficiently without bloat). Some people may have other views. However discussion of this would be political and so not allowed here.

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Yes and that is why we accepted it for so long. It was the curent bill for £650/6 months that caused sudden concern. I’ve spoken to 3 neighbours and they are all paying in the order of half what we are and in at least one case they are definitely using more water.

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There is definitely something odd here. And now you have told me your neighbours bills are lower even though they use more water I can perfectly understand your reticence to monitor. And why should you have to?

But you may have to! It seems like the water meter is doubling up or trebling up your water usage somehow.

Good luck with the visit which I believe is tomorrow.

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You ran off 2 litres and the meter said 2 litres, if it was over reading by a factor of 3 it would read 6 litres.

I am paying £290 for 6 months mainly single occupancy, it sounds like you are not too far away.

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It’s called ‘short interval control’. Something I use to do regularly in manufacturing and the results were always surprising, and nearly always isolated the problem.

I know it’s a pain in the butt but you can draw some very clear conclusions once the evidence is in front of you.

I’d first list out all the activities that use water and ask AI what is the average water consumption for each activity. Then I’d run a ‘typical’ but hypothetical days usage for Mr & Mrs Joe Average, then I’d run my own (accurate) usage and look to see where it deviates?

If you are spreadsheet literate you’d have 30min time intervals for 24hrs on the X axis with meter readings and on the Y axis you’d have activity list and LTR’s used. This would paint a very impressive picture that might help strengthen your case with the current supplier.

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Yes, knowledge is power.

When I was considering changing to meter billing I accurately estimated how much water we where using.

Measured shower flow rate and noted how long the shower was used each day.

Measured how much water was used when the washing bowl was filled with hot water. It will probably be twice the capacity of the bowl if combi boiler used.

Water used flushing the toilet.

Water used when cooking, brewing and washing.

My calculations turned out to be very accurate. :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

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Engineer visited this morning and did comprehensive investigations. Definitely no leaks in our property anywhere. No issue with the toilet cistern running into the toilet bowl continuously or anything like that. All checked out.No leaks on the feedpipe to our property. No leaks or air ingress between the feedpipe and the main supply pipe. In short everything normal and nothing at all found to explain our very high recorded usage which the engineer totally agreed is very unusually high. He will submit his report and they will contact us to see where to go next.:sob:

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I couldn’t resist putting together a quick (imaginary) spreadsheet based on the average water consumption for two people sharing a house. I don’t get to mess with Excel as much as I use to, so it’s good to get some practice. This is what it could look like…

What was interesting was that AI quoted basic consumption figures on modern day equipment. It was very clear that older equipment could use up to three times as much water. Things like dishwashers, washing machines and old toilet cisterns were the main culprits!

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As others (partially) have suggested, start by just recording the meter reading every couple of hours. It will tell you if it slowly “leaks”, or if there’s certain times during which you suddenly “lost” a bulk.

If you did lose a bulk, you and your wife will probably remember what happened in the last two hours. If unclear, do it every hour the next day. Going finer grained until you can pinpoint where it gets lost.

It could well be a device like the dishwasher or washing machine having broken in a non-obvious way where its still working but using an extortionate amount of water.

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I thought it could be washing machine.

Look my bills are £56 pcm. Crazy for single occupancy. I shower once a day for 5 mins. Washing machine 3 times a week. Dishwasher every other day. Brand new machines.

A few years ago I was paying sub £30.

Maybe check your water bill @70sPete carefully and accept it. My gas and electricity direct debit is £230 pcm. Bills are high nowadays. In UK we pay more than anywhere else due to systemic problems in our infrastucture and policies made by governments.

Sometimes we just get lucky. I’m paying Yorkshire Water £30 a month for an unmetered supply on a band E rated property.

That doesn’t help the op though. I hope he gets it sorted.