How much water per person does your household use?

Okay folks, we all know that water is/is going to be a big issue. How much do you use, do you know? do you care? do you try to economise on your usage or is it "their" responsibility to make sure there's always enough for you to hose your driveway clear of leaves? Tell us how much water you use and how you calculated this. What, if anyhting, are you doing about water conservation, and why (ie: environmental concerns, $$ concerns) We use about 8000L per month for the two of us which does pretty much everything, although the cars don't get washed very often (more through lack of time than anything) and the lawn doesn't get watered either. We have a 26,000L tank fed from our roof as our primary supply and I calculated our usage by watching how the levels fell over the past four years. For me it's not really a $$ issue, I could run our bore and keep the lawn green even during the really dry spells, but that's just really wasteful to my way of thinking.

Mick

We use a smidge over 8kl each (four of us, with regular MIL swoop-ins). If we were to work it out individually, my teenage son would send most of it down the shower drain.

A good thread though, I'll be interested to see what others use. It is rather hard to work it out off the bills, almost like they don't want you to know :rolleyes: .

I've highlighted the area in the heading as I think this will help explain wide variations.

I am using on average 3500 litres a month in a single household, where I have friends come and stay on average every fortnight for the weekend which is one adult and two kids

Cheers DJ

ps I have water saving shower heads and a front load washing which only uses a third of the water that a top load does and I don't water the garden which is mostly native to the area (tallest flowering trees in the world) and normally wash my car at my parents house as they have a pressure cleaner

I don't got no metered water.
Like Mick, I get a pretty good idea watching the tank, which is also our primary supply, but we do use bore water a fair bit.

For our household, 2 adults, and until recently, 2 kids, we would use almost 4000 litrs per person. I'm not sure how much differnce it made when our daughter went to boarding school.

Total of @3000 Lt per month for 2 people (its metered).

I don't wash the car (unless its raining). The lawn is watered via grey water. Only the vege patch is hand watered in summer, rest of the garden is tough.
Low flow showerhead, set the water level on the washing machine for each load. No pool or spa. I turn the water off when soaping up in the shower, back on to rinse.

We used a lot more, but stopped using the dishwasher, washing the car, hosing driveways, watering lawns from the hose, taking long showers and lots of other stuff.

What about all the other water I use (the stuff used to produce the things I buy) - absolutely no idea.

Big mistake , made the wrong calculation We use 8 to 9 kl per month
Definately not the 2kl I put down in the poll
WE do have a couple of weekly visits from the grandsons and they always have a bath before going home ,:rolleyes:

Rgds

Anyone else find their bill harder to read than should be necessary? i.e. you used this much, at this rate, so you owe this much?

Mine is scattered all over the place, I had to pay attention to follow it through.

Hi Mick,

As it's just me in this household(?), I don't tend to use very much. However, when there was a female in my company, so to speak (:D), the water usage (not to mention the yardage of Dunny Roll consumption!) would increase markedly :D :D

So, in the interests of water conservation, I'm keeping lassies "oot the hoose" :D :D :D :D

Don't have the foggiest.
Rainwater tanks for drinking backed up by creek and bore water

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Originally Posted by Ashore

Big mistake , made the wrong calculation We use 8 to 9 kl per month
Definately not the 2kl I put down in the poll

Rgds

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Fixed.

Al :)

We use just over 5000 l per person per month.
I think it is mainly the son who uses it.
When I have a shower Im like a sparrow, quick flick of water, then Im out.

Al :)

oops; didn't read the question properly; I answered 4000 L; should have been 2000L, and less now that we have had sprinklers and hoses banned.

Rocker

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Originally Posted by Rocker

oops; didn't read the question properly; I answered 4000 L; should have been 2000L, and less now that we have had sprinlers and hoses banned.

Rocker

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Fixed;)

To be honest I really don'tknow as we are renting at the moment so we never see the water bill. But this thread has made me think so I'll check the meter tomorrow night and se what it is in 1 month.

We try to be as conservative as possible. SWMBO and I shower first with the plug in to catch the water for the kids bath. I don't wash the car unless I really want to then I reuse the bath water (bucket it out) which otherwise gets bucketted out for water the vegies.

Rowan,
Can you change my poll answer to "up to 2000L ", I mis-read and polled for the combined household, not per person answer!
Thanks

I put don't know, I pay for it. I used to know, and I keep an eye on our averages compared to previous years for the same period, but at the end of the day, we try to be as consciencious as possible, and our water usage is what it is.

I have looked at, and have determined that the water saving features (grey water recycling, rain water to toilets etc systems) are not economic, so until they are properly subsidised, I can't afford to put them in.

we use 1000- 1500 litres of water a day depends on what time of year it is ,i have a 13000 litre tank at the house and i pump out of a 2500000 gallon dam which is fed from a mountain stream that runs 8 months of the year

Hmm. 7500 too dam much as my wife keeps telling me and the kids.

Be interesting to see how this stacks up. Hopefully heaps more will go over 8000.

Come guys, it will help me get the wife off my back!

Rod

I don't know but I have 14,000 gallons in tanks. my wife and I haven't run low yet. For the garden I have a bore.

Family of 4, 2 of them teenagers. 320kl/year.

Main usage culprits are teenage showers (low-vol heads) and the washing machine. The garden gets watered when it rains, use a high-pressure cleaner (< 9L/min) on the cars every blue moon.

Still waiting for the death of the top-load washing machine we bought when the oldest kid was a baby - it's just going 18 years old, and is a testament to 1950's US engineering, it just won't die.

We're also trying to slide a 100,000 litre rainwater tank past our ever-intrusive local council. If that goes in, we should be able to reduce town water consumption substantially.

woodbe.

We just got our water bill from the council with all manner of averages and targets etc. On average we use about 123litres per person per day, (the council average is 214litres), or about 3693litres per person per month. There are 5 of us, and seem to do a lot of laundry, but no hoses have been used for months...no gardening and no washing cars.
I still reckon we use too much:o.

Cheers,

I'll have to check tonight, but I put my garden hose away , gee, over 2 years ago now.
We have a top loader, but I'll bet that any water saved there goes on HWMBO's and the girls's showers :rolleyes:

The gardens, well, I officialy have one small garden bed, 9 shrubs, and 13 potplants. The garden bed gets the nightly condensation runoff, the shrubs never get watered unless it rains and the potplants get watered when it rains from buckets under the drips/pipes or when they are drooping (generally after two weeks of no rain).

I, too, think our water usage is way too high.

cheers
Wendy

Acording to our last rates notice we're using around 240 litres per day. Most of the plants are natives so they get buy on a bit of water here and there. We have a hedge under construction, it gets a bucket or of water here and there. Our vegie patch gets a little as it needs it and that's about it. We run our shower and washing water straight into the yard which gives us a nice green patch. Last weeks bit of rain left 48mm in the gauge which will get things by for another couple of weeks. I still want to try and cut down the amount of liquid gold we use. Next project will be a water tank. Looking at a 5000L job for general day usage.

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Originally Posted by rufflyrustic

I, too, think our water usage is way too high.

cheers
Wendy

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Mine is astronomical.:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

Yesterday I got the water bill for last quarter and found out that, unbeknown to me, I had a leaking pipe. Located it today under a concrete slab outside the back door. Disconnected it and capped it before it goes underground to stop the leaking.

Now to fix it by rerouting the pipe along the wall so I don't have to dig up concrete.

Then to get the bill fixed because here they charge you for the water and then they charge you for water disposed of through the sewerage system, which is arbitrarily set at a fixed percentage of water used. No advantage in trying to collect and reuse grey water because they will still charge you as if you flushed it through the sewerage.:(

Peter.

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Originally Posted by Sturdee

here they charge you for the water and then they charge you for water disposed of through the sewerage system, which is arbitrarily set at a fixed percentage of water used. No advantage in trying to collect and reuse grey water because they will still charge you as if you flushed it through the sewerage.:(

Peter.

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That is something that needs to change, and quickly otherwise there's no financial incentive to do the right thing, and for most folk the wallet beats the conscience hands down :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Sturdee

Then to get the bill fixed because here they charge you for the water and then they charge you for water disposed of through the sewerage system, which is arbitrarily set at a fixed percentage of water used. No advantage in trying to collect and reuse grey water because they will still charge you as if you flushed it through the sewerage.:(

Peter.

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Just checked that horrible bill.

The sewerage disposal rate is calculated by multiplying the water used by a seasonal factor of 0.9659 which is multiplied by the discharge factor of 0.45 to get the KL of water. This works out at roughly half the water billed which is assumed to have gone through the sewerage system.

As this is charged at $ 1.0116 a KL in addition to the sewerage service charge there is no cost advantage in trying to divert grey water from the shower and washing machine into a holding tank for use in the garden as they will slug you anyway.


Peter.

Exactly! And exactly inappropriate for today.

We have 2 kids and my niece who I look after while she is studying in Australia. Between the 5 of us, we used 30,000 litres in the last quarter (2000 each per month).

When my niece first came to Australia, she had a 15 minutes shower every night. After my constant nagging and teaching, it is now down to 7 minutes and sometimes 10 minutes. To me a 5 minutes shower is ideal. If anyone has a shower for more than 10 minutes then there is something wrong.

Like petrol they should make water more expensive. Not that I like to pay more but we are really running out of water and people are still wasting it.

150000 per month-------big property

How big and what do you do?

As in my sig, I am a wood supplier, specializing in woodturning blanks, slabs, and burls. I live in Perth. I use a lot of water for the property, and high presssure water also for clearing the bark off of burls. See this thread.


Regards

Just in case youre worried about the amount of water I'm using, we have a very large bore.

Just got my bill. I live in a block of 8 townhouses. Our average daily use per unit was 1078 litres. I would have expected it to be about 300-400. Think we've got a leak somewhere!! Could all 8 units use this much water considering we've got very small gardens, are all at work most of the day and don't have kids? If not whats the process in finding the leak.

Brent:)

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Originally Posted by bresmith

If not whats the process in finding the leak.

Brent:)

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All the newer types of water water metres have a leak detection meter on them, its a little wheel that moves even with the slowest of leaks.

Check your meter for one, if it hasnt got it, maybe request the meter to be changed.

If it has got one see if it is moving when no one is using any water.

Al :)