Riddle me this

[sgtsandman]

Holy crap... I guess I shouldn't complain about my $150 water bills in the summer when I forget to shut off the sprinkler at night. I put a shit ton of water on the lawn every year.

Re: wells - I have an old well in my basement that isn't hooked up. I should just plug it but I keep thinking I might use it for watering the grass someday. Everyone has city water and sewer now and honestly I am totally fine with that - septic systems and wells have no place in a normal city. There is not enough space for the septic to percolate without contaminating the well. If everyone had both, everyone would be peeing and pooping on top of their drinking water.

A well by itself is fine but drilling it and maintaining it probably cost a lot more than a city water hookup... and it is very likely cleaner... there are a lot of wells in certain areas around here that aren't safe to drink out of because they are contaminated with chemicals.

I guess it depends on where you live and how deep they have to drill as far as the cost. Around here, it ends up being roughly the same. So, pay me in small increments over time or all at once. Take your pick.

 

[sgtsandman]

wow, you guys have cheap water. my water bill is 135 a month because of the averaging they use. thats water, waste water, and rain run off that we get charged now. so when it rains, tehy charge us for the water that goes into the gutter and sewer. a new fee they came up with last year and, apparently, only the neighbor and i complained about. i get charged 12 dollars a month for rain run off

Ours is broken up and we don't pay for rain water yet. Water is usually some where around $100 and sewage around $140 - $150.

EDIT: I should add, these are billed quarterly, not monthly.

 

[Shran]

I guess it depends on where you live and how deep they have to drill as far as the cost. Around here, it ends up being roughly the same. So, pay me in small increments over time or all at once. Take your pick.

For sure. The water table at my house is pretty high... my basement is 6' deep, the well cover is just above the basement floor, and there's a big 3' diameter pit that is about 10' deep and then another smaller pipe that goes down further. In the spring the water level in the big pit has gotten uncomfortably close to the lid a couple times but hasn't overflowed.

My parents live about 50 miles south of me and IIRC some of their neighbors were drilling 3-400ft before they hit any water. There were some areas around there that the county wasn't allowing developments in because they were concerned about the water table being sucked dry.

 

[superj]

there is a well pipe in my back yard but i don't know if its any good. its probably not good for anything but watering, if the pipe is not collapsed or corroded through since i am 1/3-1/2 mile from the bay. my yard is sand and when i dig down about 3-4 feet, water starts seeping in. works good if you want to put concrete around posts because you just let the water mix on its own but not good when you don't want stuff to settle and crack

 

[Curious Hound]

I average just under the minimum every month. My water bill is $12 - $13 very faithfully. I live by myself. I have a septic tank, so no sewer bill. Though I will eventually need to have the septic tank pumped. Again, since I live by myself, the septic pumpout should be a pretty rare occurrence. Ive been there about 6 years. House is around 9 years old.

 

[Jazzer]

I had my septic tank pumped after 25 years of 1-2 person use, and it was in good shape according to the pumpers. They advised a 5-7 year pumpout for 1 person. It was only $230 so cheap insurance against a solids overflow into the leach field.

 

[ShhhhhDougsHere]

I live in Dayton Ohio as those on here who know anything about me most likely already know.

I live alone in a 3 bedroom, 1 bath, 2-story house. And I live about 2 miles east of the center of downtown Dayton. On east 3rd St..
Dayton bills for water quarterly so every 3 months.

I don't pay the water at my house, my brother Andy does. ( He's my landlord. )

I've seen the bill however. It has a lot of fees on it.
The whole Bill totals around $250.00 each 1/4.
To me The funniest fee I've noticed on the bill is for the garbage cans.
It's $30.00 for each garbage can.

I will post again today with the bill in hand so I can let everyone know what else Dayton charges for on the water bill.

Funny side note however Andy has 14 garbage cans at his house right now.
That's $1680.00 a year he pays in garbage can fees for at his house.

And as part of his property Management business he takes trash to the dump at least once a week as well.
It's hard telling what he pays for that a year.

And once again I wrote another book.

 

[ShhhhhDougsHere]

Okay I just got back to my brother Andy's house from my house getting a copy of my water bill.

I was wrong the garbage can fee is not $30.00.
It's $48.77 each.
And it's called:
Waste Removal Charges For 1 Container(S).

So Andy for his 14 Containers pays,
$2731.12 a year.
In my last post I had wrote that he pays $2080.00 a year.
I don't know what I was thinking because at $30.00 each a year would have been $1680.00 for 14.
I have edited my last post to the right numbers.

So the bill has:
Sewer charge
Storm charge
Waste Removal Charge
Water charge
Well Field Charge
& Since Andy usually waits until it gets the third notice to pay the bill it has a late fee charge.

The actual amount paid for the water is $27.43.

And once again I wrote another book.

 

[Brain75]

I've lived all over everywhere in Colo (and 2 places near the greater Austin TX metro) , and every municipality (even Steiner Ranch and Jollyville TX) is the same except Denver (Denver owns a crap ton of water rights as they were smart and latched on very early - 1876 early).... The bill consists of ~$20 in sewer, ~20 in "basin improvement", ~20 in "drainage fee", and now with online they tack either a $6 in person/postage or a $5 online portal fee, etc etc (don't forget your $10 admin fee) - you are always lookin at $75-100 / mo in unavoidable fees before a single drop has passed... I shut my water off in 2003 for 4 months because the $100 "hookup" fee (it was all hooked up all they did was start and stop billing) was cheaper than paying for it to sit vacant for 4 months..

Denver, like another major metro mentioned earlier the water is soo cheap they wont bill it every month - postage is more than the cost, talkin $7/mo kinda grand total. So they give you our choice annual (which has a service fee) or every 3 months. Aurora (next suburb east, 3rd largest city in CO behind Denver and the 'Springs) is in that ballpark of ~$100 before usage.

 

[Brain75]

The one that gripes me is when they campaign something to get voters to pass it as "reducing costs, saving money, making your bill smaller" (Austin TX) and then take away your big trash can and give you a small trash can and a slightly bigger medium sized recycling can after it passes and the bill goes up $25/mo due to "increased costs". Their idea was with "big" recycling bins and everyone recycling it would cost less to handle all that trash and people wouldn't need full size trash cans.

 

[superj]

yup, they passed that crap all over texas.

i forget what the charges are for trashcans here in corpus each month. you are supposed to have one per address but can order a second for whatever cost. so since my address is 519, and my garage is 519 1/2, i have 2 trash cans and 2 recycle cans. for a long time i had 4 of each because the city messed up but they figured it out after about 12 years and came and tried to pick up everything but 1 trash and 1 recycle. i made an issue and they finally gave me the second of each because i argued about the 519 1/2 address. they were not happy about that since my lot is just a normal half acre lot.


i don;t know how the backyard garage became another address but its got its own gas meter and electric meter.

 

[Rick W]

Every month the city bills me for $30 and change for water.

I left on March 31st, shut off the water from the meter, and came home on May 3rd. Zero water consumption in April.

I just went to pay my water bill, and it billed me $30.50 for water.

From 1/16 - 2/14 they said I used 1247
From 2/14 - 3/14 they said I used 1085
From 3/14 - 4/15 they said I used 1094
From 4/15 - 5/15 they said I used 693.

This seems a little suspicious to me.

I mean, it's only $30, but I expected my bill to be less while I was gone.

Everybody’s comments are on track here. If you shut everything off, you should be able to tell if the meter is still running. I’ve seen the rotating triangle, but some of them have a needle that rotates, some of them have the last digit is tenths of a gallon or something so it spins, but you can tell if it’s moving.

Second is just reading the meter at intervals when everything is off. It’s easy nowadays because you can just take a picture, and take a picture when you come back, and compare the numbers.

But I’m stepping in for a different thought. It’s very common on commercial properties to have a water meter for all the water that enters the property, and then a meter in a branch line that feeds the landscaping and outdoor cleanup stuff like washing windows or washing vehicles or such. The biggest charge is for the sewage treatment, so if you can prove a percentage to the water did not go down the sewer, you can avoid the sewer treatment charge.

I’ve seen that on residential properties as well, but they’re usually big properties. Check with your local authority.

Rare for my area, I have a septic system because my side of the street for about 10 houses is sitting just a few feet above Stone Mountain solid granite. So I only pay the water bill, which has gone from about seven dollars every two months 30 years ago to about 10 or $15 a month. I use a lot of outside water, but it’s hard to justify splitting the line and putting in a sub-meter to save four or five dollars a month.

Is your workshop a second address? I don’t know how that would affect you. Also, I remember when you first started on your workshop, you were doing a lot of stuff with the lines in the ground. A tiny little pinhole leak can pass a lot of water over 30 days.

Anyway, just a thought, as always, my two cents, hope it helps

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

And this is why we all need to be more involved in the politics where we live, they’re trying to pass all kinds of restrictive crap all over the country. That’s about all I’m gonna say so I don’t actually get into politics, but yeah. We do have a voice, but we have to show up. There was a local push for a bunch of stuff and after over 200 people showed up, it got dropped.

 

[Jim Oaks]

The bill lists gallons and fluctuates so I'm guessing I'm being charged for the gallons.

Last year I replaced the line coming from the meter going to the house, and put in a T to run the line to the shop. I also added valves to shut off the water going to the house, the shop, and one going to an outside spigot. The water was completely shut off.

As far as a leak, I thought I had one when I got home because when I opened the lid to get to the valve in the ground it was under water. I checked the meter and it wasn't running which told me I didn't have a leak. Then my neighbor told me we had like a foot of rain and flooding right before I came home. The ground was so saturated it was like walking on a sponge.

So, no leak.

Also, my meter has the sensor thing on the lid where they're supposed to be able to get the reading while driving by.

I'm guessing someone guesstimated instead of doing their job.

 

[Robertmangrum.rm]

My water and sewage are combined on 1 bill. Being in live inside city limits, my trash and recycling is also included. It is always and ai mean always around 130 a month. 2 years ago I drained our pool twice fixing the liner. Filled it 2 times in a month and no change. I've watched the meter guy just drive around the dead end and leave. I have yet to ever see him get out and read the meter in 10 years. It's still the old rotoray dial type meter. Checked to see if it was one of those new digital wireless ones. Last time I looked it was so dirty I couldn't read the numbers haha