SAWS Bill Seems a little on the high side (2013, rental)

[klturi421]

I have a family of 7 but we live like a family of 4 or 5, showers every other day, about 3 top loading loads a week dishwasher once a day but I feel that the bill that I have is a bit high. Not watering the lawn or using anything excessive.

I attached a snapshot of my bill for this month.


The neighbor hood average is about 5. From what I gather I should be around 7000 or so.

Anything I can do to lower the bill? Does what I am being charged seem average?

[Bo]

Did you reduce your lawn watering over the winter? SAWS bases your sewer rates on your water usage between November and March. The more you cut your watering during that time, the lower your sewer rates will be the rest of the year.

SAWS News: Winter Averaging

[Hedgehog_Mom]

When my bill suddenly increased, it was because the pressure-reducing valve needed to be adjusted. We could feel the increase in water pressure in the showers though.

One thing you can do is tell everyone in the house not to touch a faucet or toilet, then go outside and look at your water meter. If the smallest dial is spinning and no one is using any water, you have a leak somewhere. Even a running toilet can increase your bill.

If you want to compare usage, I have a family of four, six loads of laundry (at least!) a week, dishwasher every day and showers every day. Our usage last month was 3741 gallons.

If you don't have any leaks and are using that much water, changing your showerhead and toilets for water saving ones will help somewhat. Some people who have the older toilets and don't want to replace them will take a plastic bottle, fill it partway with gravel or sand (to weight it down) and the rest of the way with water, put the lid on, and put it in the toilet tank. Then the tank uses less water every time it fills.

[sapphire]

SAWS will give you two water-saving toilets for free....just make sure you open the box before pulling off the lot to make sure they are not cracked. One of mine was and they don't replace them.

[BroadStreet/PattisonAve]

SAWS did increase their rates. They sent out a notification around Jan/Feb.

[Paka]

Originally Posted by Bo

Did you reduce your lawn watering over the winter? SAWS bases your sewer rates on your water usage between November and March. The more you cut your watering during that time, the lower your sewer rates will be the rest of the year.

SAWS News: Winter Averaging

During the winter months, because you will pay ALL YEAR long based on the average H2O use, I believe (no proof, but seems strange EVERYONE has the same complaint) that they "average" vs actual read more during those months.

Everytime I get the bill I go out and read the meter....if off much at all (or OVER what it actually reads) I CALL, dispute and MAKE them send someone out to read the ACTUAL usage...of course, kinda mute advice now that the "winter" read is over for this next sewer rate season...and does NOT start again until Nov 2013.

[RedNeckRick]

Your sewer bill is a bit high because of the winter averaging. Your 10k gallons is almost twice what my family of 4 used this winter and we do some outside watering during the winter. Otherwise, 60 bucks isn't too bad.

[hadleyzoo]

Here's my situation. Moved in to rental on 1 April. Water meter was read on 2 April at 4075 and ended on 1 May at 4115 (according to the bill). This calculates to being a $213 bill. In the 9 years at our other house we just sold, NEVER had a water bill more than $60 (and if it was that high was because we were watering outside). Normally it's under $35.

So anyway, it's just me and my son in the rental. He's at school all day and I work. SAWS is trying to tell me we used 30,000 gallons of water from 2 April to 1 May. The last 6 months of my water bill at the last house registered about 2,000 gallons a month average. So I called them and they said check to see if the little triangle is spinning which would mean a leak...left work to come home and check....nope, not spinning. So they put in a request to have the meter re-read yesterday after I told them the current number on my meter is 4038. Remember...they said it was at 4075 the beginning of last month on the bill I got yesterday. So I get a call back late yesterday afternoon that the meter isn't registering water usage and they estimated my bill for last month. Really? And who decides to estimate 30,000 gallons for 2 people? So basically they said water is being used, but the meter is not registering (advancing on the dial).

So they sent a guy out today to replace the meter. Welllll....guess what? The meter advances just fine. I flushed every toilet, turned on every faucet and hose and we both watched that meter advance just fine. The other thing is the guy started to dig up the area where the meter is to go ahead and replace it, and decided he'd come back tomorrow to do it (this was at 11:00 this morning).

I'm thinking that whoever is reading meters for this area, isn't actually reading the meters.

[goodmanm]

Originally Posted by klturi421

I have a family of 7 but we live like a family of 4 or 5, showers every other day, about 3 top loading loads a week dishwasher once a day but I feel that the bill that I have is a bit high. Not watering the lawn or using anything excessive.

I attached a snapshot of my bill for this month.


The neighbor hood average is about 5. From what I gather I should be around 7000 or so.

Anything I can do to lower the bill? Does what I am being charged seem average?

If I read that correctly, $60 isn't that high of a bill.

[grjr]

Originally Posted by goodmanm

If I read that correctly, $60 isn't that high of a bill.

You have to add all the subtotals together to get the final total.