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Our water bill was shockingly high in June. My 2nd son was home from college (suspects he takes multi-hour showers) and we did have a running toilet that I caught a couple of times, so I watched things closely, told son to shorten his showers, fixed the toilet and the following month useage was down a lot, but it still looked high. We used about 18-20 cf per month last summer, dropped to 7 or 8 during the winter, June was 30! July dropped to 16. Just got a bill for 54 cf!! One month. I called the water company to check on things. Called the sprinkler guy to check for leaks. I will be checking meter several times daily. It was not spinning around when I looked at it. This is nuts! $334.90 in case you were wondering.
WOW! Where do you live? We've only been here in Union County a month, was charged $114 for 15 days and thought that was high. Waiting to see what the next bill brings. We paid that for three months of water in MD. and had a pool. Please post if they find a leak in your irrigation system. Thanks.
If you guys and gals have been watering your lawns heavily, that may account for your high water bills. Watering lawns eats up almost 50% of the water use in the Charlotte Metro Area. If you have an automatic sprinkler system you might want to check its operation. Charlotte uses a tiered water use billing method that tends to get onerous once you pass a certain level of consumption. When I first moved here from NJ, I was so disappointed that my lawn was Bermuda Grass. I was planning to get rid of it, but since it uses so little water, I decided to keep it. This came in handy during the drought of 2007. I remember posts of folks from Waxhaw and Weddington with > $500 water bills. Well, the good thing about Monroe is that, while it may not be as "fashionable" as those other two Union County towns, having its own water supply saves quite a bit. My last months bill 6/29- 7/29 was $11.43!
If you have a water leak the red dial on your water meter will be going round & round. A water drip will not register on your meter. Just look at your water meter. If the dial is moving then you have a leak. If it isnt moving you're watering the lawn too much & someone in the house is not conserving water.
We had new sod put down in our pretty small backyard earlier in the summer, and we were watering it pretty regularly. Water bill went from $20-25 on a normal month to $160 - was pretty shocked.
Well, I can top you!!! We got our water bill last month and it was 788.00!!!! The month before was 26.00. Of course I called and they sent a tech out. I haven't heard back yet if the meter had been misread. No leaks and no, we do not have a pool, I do irrigate on an automatic sprinkler system, but an average size yard. The girl on the phone did tell me that in my area the average water bill for the summer is around 200. And my area hadn't been charged for 3 months. I said I have been getting a bill every month granted it has been small. But since we just moved here this spring I have nothing to compare what the average bill should be. If I hadn't been charged correctly the last few months and it is backcharged I figured the bill is probablly correct so i paid it. They would have taken a payment plan, but what is the point when I will get next month's bill too. So I am expecting around a 200 bill this month.... we will see......
This happened to me before, and when I called, the CSR explained that sometimes they don't get out to read every meter, so they bill you an average amount for one month, then when they do read the meter you get billed for the actual usage. So it might be that it hasn't been so different each month, but they weren't using the actual meter reading to bill.
We had the irrigation guy out this morning and he found a leak on the supply side of the system, so that means it was leaking even when the system electric control was in the "off" position. But the leak was so slow I didn't notice the blue wheel (ours is blue) turning, but he said he could definitely tell the difference when he shut off the supply valve to the irrigation system (wheel stopped turning) and it would move when he turned the system on.
So that is good news that he found something, and I will be watching the meter closely - probably check it and record it twice a day to see how much water we use doing various things, especially noting how much water is used through one cycle of watering our lawn.
Every monthly bill gives you a graph showing the prior 12 months useage, and this one really jumped off the page as extra unusually high. I do know that due to the graduated useage charges if you use twice as much water your bill will more than double (more like triple)
I planted Charleston grass and don't water my 1/2 acre yard at all now. CMUD bill last month was $8.
BTW, for you newcomers, this has been a very rainly and cooler summer compared to what is usual here.
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