Average water bill for single family house San Diego?

[UCGal]

[quote=moneymaker]I personally think it is a bunch of crap to tie one’s water usage to the sewer bill. The sewer bill should be a set amount that is equally shared by all. I remember in a college chemistry class the instructor would run the water at full blast after class for several minutes to “clean the pipes”. Well if that is how they are cleaned then I think I’m actually doing the city a favor by using more water. I think it is a tax on those that can afford it more and it is unfair.[/quote]
It’s especially unfair if you’re using greywater (laundry/outdoor shower/etc) to deep water plants.

That’s water used that is NOT going into the sewer.

But it does cut the irrigation portion of the water bill…

[UCGal]

[quote=sdduuuude]Our Total City Water and Sewer Costs:

2007: $1002
2008: $1111
2009: $1197
2010: $1170

2 adults, 2 kids, 2 dogs.
1700 sq. ft + garage.
Back lawn, 800 sq. ft.

I take longer showers than any teenager, took the water savers out of the shower heads long ago, and we don’t skimp on watering the garden. Lots of laundry, too.[/quote]
Our bills are similar – maybe $100/year more.
For the most recent 12 months we’ve paid $1260.

2 adults, 2 kids, 1 dog. Part of the year an additional 2 seniors who do a lot of laundry.

2000sf main house + 700sf granny flat.
1/4 acre lot, not much lawn – but lots of garden (groundcover, fruit trees, flowering shrubs, veggie gardens.)

We kept shrinking our lawn because we didn’t like mowing, chemicals to keep it green (weed and feed), and because we wanted to expand our veggie production. Lawns aren’t very practical in So Cal.

[UCGal]

Some documents that show the percent of water use for typical residential irrigation.

http://www.cbia.org/go/cbia/?LinkServID=E242764F-88F9-4438-9992948EF86E49EA

http://www.calwater.ca.gov/Admin_Record/D-046947.pdf

57% or 61%, depending on which source.

Showers are 17%.

So even if you take longer/wetter showers than average – irrigation is still going to have the biggest impact on your bill.

[no_such_reality]

Nice find UC, I couldn’t get google to spit the second one out yesterday.

Note, the first one is for new home construction targets, which are utilizing a number of water savings features inside and out.

The 60% irrigation is average across customers in all housing types (I assume since no clarification is provided).

So if the average is 60% and that is from a fairly typical cross section of housing in SD, I would assume a person with a 10,000SF lot would be far higher.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=UCGal]Some documents that show the percent of water use for typical residential irrigation.

http://www.cbia.org/go/cbia/?LinkServID=E242764F-88F9-4438-9992948EF86E49EA

http://www.calwater.ca.gov/Admin_Record/D-046947.pdf

57% or 61%, depending on which source.

Showers are 17%.

So even if you take longer/wetter showers than average – irrigation is still going to have the biggest impact on your bill.[/quote]

Thanks for taking the time to post this UCGal. It’s interesting.

What’s the typical average of daily gallons used for you Piggs? Our last bill when we were not home for all but 1 week says 573 gallons per day.

But the bill before that when we were home the entire 2 month cycle says 446 gallons per day average.

[UCGal]

I think I posted my stats earlier in this thread… but I’ll post them from the latest bills again.

From 4/27-6/27/2012 we used 24 HCF. (may june bill)
Our next bill will come out in a week or so.
We were gone for almost 3 weeks of that.

My mangy kids don’t bath as frequently as yours. Something about pre-teen boys feeling no need to be hygienic. It’s gross.

We don’t have much lawn (as posted above) and have hooked an outdoor shower into grey watering the shrubs. This saves on irrigation.
We use more water in the summer than winter – so irrigation is still impacting.

No pool.

Neighbor uphill from us waters a lot – we don’t water the fruit trees on that side of the yard… they thrive anyway.

We’re not typical at all. I suspect lawns have high impact on water bills (require frequent watering). By sticking to more trees/shrubs… using a combo of drip irrigation and soaker hoses for the trees, shrubs, veggies. Only the front yard and a side yard get spray irrigation.

Some more bills/usage.
March April: 17HCF (assume there was rain and irrigation turned off)
Jan Feb: 25HCF
Nov Dec 2011: 13HCF (assume there was rain and irrigation turned off)
Sept Oct: 24HCF
Jul Aug: 31HCF
May June 2011: 25HCF

[earlyretirement]

[quote=UCGal]I think I posted my stats earlier in this thread… but I’ll post them from the latest bills again.

From 4/27-6/27/2012 we used 24 HCF. (may june bill)
Our next bill will come out in a week or so.
We were gone for almost 3 weeks of that.

My mangy kids don’t bath as frequently as yours. Something about pre-teen boys feeling no need to be hygienic. It’s gross.

We don’t have much lawn (as posted above) and have hooked an outdoor shower into grey watering the shrubs. This saves on irrigation.
We use more water in the summer than winter – so irrigation is still impacting.

No pool.

Neighbor uphill from us waters a lot – we don’t water the fruit trees on that side of the yard… they thrive anyway.

We’re not typical at all. I suspect lawns have high impact on water bills (require frequent watering). By sticking to more trees/shrubs… using a combo of drip irrigation and soaker hoses for the trees, shrubs, veggies. Only the front yard and a side yard get spray irrigation.

Some more bills/usage.
March April: 17HCF (assume there was rain and irrigation turned off)
Jan Feb: 25HCF
Nov Dec 2011: 13HCF (assume there was rain and irrigation turned off)
Sept Oct: 24HCF
Jul Aug: 31HCF
May June 2011: 25HCF[/quote]

Ah..got it. Sorry..I missed your data the first read through.

I see you’re posting in HCF. Yeah, my total HCF for the last cycle was 46 HCF.

Definitely it’s a good topic and one that I’m going to pay more attention now. Before, I didn’t really think about it too much but the last bill was an eye opener.

Thanks again to those that posted info.

[TheSeaward]

@flu: When you install the undersink costco system, you have to attach the filter’s reject water line to your under-sink plumbing. This is the water that the reverse osmosis system uses to flush its filters and it is normally run through this tube and then down your sink drain. You can detach this tube pretty easily and just point it over a bucket to collect it like I did. Or if you are fancy, you can run a longer tube and deposit it in a bigger reservoir somewhere else.

I’m pretty sure even the reject water is safe for drinking / pets / watering plants, because it’s derived from city water that’s for drinking anyway and it’s not very concentrated due to the 1:4 efficiency… more like drinking a glass of water that had evaporated for a while. Also, it tasted fine.

[earlyretirement]

I was having dinner at one of my neighbors house down the street. His lot is about 1,000 sq. feet bigger than mine but he doesn’t have as much landscaping as he has a big outdoor patio with flagstone in much of the backyard.

I asked him what his last water bill was. His had no clue as his wife paid the bills. He went to go get it and was shocked it was $580 for the last bill (60 day cycle). He also has 2 young kids.

Hopefully the next bill isn’t too bad but I’m guessing mine will be at least that with the shower, etc.

[Anonymous]

I saw your post and had to reply, since the exact same thing happened to us. We live in a nice neighborhood in Burbank. After coming home from 2 weeks in Italy, our water bill was $400 over normal!!! I have been in person to the dwp, showed ticket and hotel receipts, even had a representative from the dwp come and check to see if the meter matched up with the bill. It does. We have no leaks anywhere. Given our fence situation, there is unfortunately only one conclusion we can come to, and that is that our neighbor (the only direct one with a pool) tapped into our water supply to fill his pool. He knew the dates we were gone, and I can see on the detailed bill that he did it the night after we left, and the evening before we came home. I mean, the water was on full blast for periods of 10 to 12 hours. But, not having any proof, there is nothing we can do. We can only draw conclusions. It’s really hard to accept this betrayal, since he’s been a neighbor for over 20 years!

[ocrenter]

[quote=guidosmom]I saw your post and had to reply, since the exact same thing happened to us. We live in a nice neighborhood in Burbank. After coming home from 2 weeks in Italy, our water bill was $400 over normal!!! I have been in person to the dwp, showed ticket and hotel receipts, even had a representative from the dwp come and check to see if the meter matched up with the bill. It does. We have no leaks anywhere. Given our fence situation, there is unfortunately only one conclusion we can come to, and that is that our neighbor (the only direct one with a pool) tapped into our water supply to fill his pool. He knew the dates we were gone, and I can see on the detailed bill that he did it the night after we left, and the evening before we came home. I mean, the water was on full blast for periods of 10 to 12 hours. But, not having any proof, there is nothing we can do. We can only draw conclusions. It’s really hard to accept this betrayal, since he’s been a neighbor for over 20 years![/quote]

stories like this just make you want to install some bad-ass security camera all around the perimeter. probably would cost about the same price as the cost of the stolen water.

[XBoxBoy]

One of our neighbors was having some remodeling done, and since they only live at the house part time they had cameras install. Sure enough about a month after the cameras were installed, they had a bunch of flagstone stolen from their driveway one night. Guess who was on the camera? One of the neighbors! They approached the woman who was the thief and she denied it. But when they threatened to call the police and file charges she brought the stones back. People… what can you say!

[earlyretirement]

[quote=guidosmom]I saw your post and had to reply, since the exact same thing happened to us. We live in a nice neighborhood in Burbank. After coming home from 2 weeks in Italy, our water bill was $400 over normal!!! I have been in person to the dwp, showed ticket and hotel receipts, even had a representative from the dwp come and check to see if the meter matched up with the bill. It does. We have no leaks anywhere. Given our fence situation, there is unfortunately only one conclusion we can come to, and that is that our neighbor (the only direct one with a pool) tapped into our water supply to fill his pool. He knew the dates we were gone, and I can see on the detailed bill that he did it the night after we left, and the evening before we came home. I mean, the water was on full blast for periods of 10 to 12 hours. But, not having any proof, there is nothing we can do. We can only draw conclusions. It’s really hard to accept this betrayal, since he’s been a neighbor for over 20 years![/quote]

Wow! This is interesting to read about.
Actually one of our neighbors does have a pool! It would be hard for me to believe that someone would steal water. But maybe that is what happened.

As mentioned in a past post, I scheduled for the City of San Diego to come out. They have this free program where they will come out and go throughout the inside and outside of the house.

I was pretty impressed by it and the guy that came out was very friendly. He first went throughout our house and put blue tablets in all the toilets to check for slow leaks from the tank. Then he went out and checked each station of our sprinkler and checked each individual sprinkler head.

Did calculations on the time of each station. He also brought a goodie bag with a some free stuff like a nice spray nozzle for an outside hose, grocery bag and some flower seeds as well as a 5 minute sprinkler timer.

He literally spent 1.5 hours at the house and gave several pages worth of paperwork and projections, tips to save water, recommendations for adjustment on sprinkler heads, loose sprinkler heads, etc.

It was very informative and educational.
All the old posts were correct that the sprinkler heads use about 60% to 65% of your total water bill in a typical household. Ours is probably less with the long showers/bath.

However, I still think that it has to be a case of someone using some water while we were gone. Because we were gone for all but 1 week this summer on the previous bill (52 days of the 60 day cycle). And on THIS projected 60 day cycle (we are already on day 42 of the 60 day cycle), we will a bit less water than on the other bill. It just doesn’t add up.

After we came back from vacation I initially turned the sprinkler time down on each station but the gardner said that with the heat the plants/grass really needed the extra water so we set it back up.

A question for you, guidosmom. You mentioned, you could see on your detailed bill which day he filled it? Does your water bill actually detail out the dates and usage? San Diego bill doesn’t do that. Did you confront your neighbor about it or at least ask them about it?

I’d highly recommend the free inspection from the City. Funny, but I asked the guy that came out today how people find out about it. He said that it’s like my case….they get a really high bill and that gets them more aware and have the City come out and check the meter. He said in the majority of the cases, it’s a case of someone taking a wrong reading in which case the next bill is adjusted/credited.

He said the average shower puts out about 2.5 gallons of water a minute and the average bathtub puts out about 5 gallons of water a minute. We take longer showers plus we have the double shower head. Just doing a rough estimate it sounds like our shower/bath budget is higher than the typical family at about 25% of our total bill. We are using an average of 549 total gallons per day.

Also, I commented to this guy that worked for the City that came out how expensive water is here in San Diego. He said he has been doing this for 15 years and said that San Diego was the most expensive city in the country.

Is this true?

[Essbee]

For 8/1-9/4/12, our bill was $102.61.

That’s for:
4 people (2 adults, 1 preschooler, 1 toddler).
We were out of town for 4 days during this period.
~3800 sf home
Not sure of sf of lot. Maybe ~6000 sf. Not very big.
My husband loves to water the lawn and plants.
Pretty small lawn, though.
506 gallons/day = “23 units”
Graph shows that the previous owners (2 older people) used about half as much as we do.
Olivenhain Water District.

[Author]

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