Water Bills!

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lVlrBoJang1es
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Water Bills!

Post by lVlrBoJang1es » September 28th, 2017, 7:49 am

My water bill comes quarterly. This is quite brutal when the 3 driest months (june/july/august here) land on the same billing cycle.

I've been dealing with some temperamental young turf from an overseed in 2016 (it was nearly a reno tbh), a new irrigation system install which i've been tuning and tweaking, as well as this being my first summer actually caring about my lawn (i'm a noob!).

My bill just came in. I knew it was going to be astronomical based on the factors listed above; $765.44 which comes out to be about $255.15/month. Further, that's about ($56.70/month) per 1K sq ft.

Wondering where that compares to others?

I'm sure i'll be able to reduce this as i tune my sprinkler heads a bit more and as my lawn matures.

smontgo150
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Re: Water Bills!

Post by smontgo150 » September 28th, 2017, 10:33 am

Damn... How much do you water? Something has to be broken. My bills were 350 a month in Texas on 2.5 irrigated acres and keeping a 40,000 gallon pool full. I now only have 20K of turf here, 15 zones of irrigation and am in Lake Orion MI. I water at the first signs of stress (control my irrigation controller manually) and I am about half your bill. My grass looks fantastic too. I use municipal water and do not pump from the lake.

greenrebellion
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Re: Water Bills!

Post by greenrebellion » September 28th, 2017, 1:04 pm

I'm in Michigan, but other side of the state so I'm not sure how much your water rates vary compared to mine, but $250 a month is very high. My bill shot up to $300 for the quarter as I did a five week fallow in July for my 2017 renovation...but that's only $100 per month.

Have you done a catch can audit to see how much water you are putting down at one time? What was your watering frequency?

dan10
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Re: Water Bills!

Post by dan10 » September 28th, 2017, 1:38 pm

lVlrBoJang1es wrote:
September 28th, 2017, 7:49 am
My water bill comes quarterly. This is quite brutal when the 3 driest months (june/july/august here) land on the same billing cycle.

I've been dealing with some temperamental young turf from an overseed in 2016 (it was nearly a reno tbh), a new irrigation system install which i've been tuning and tweaking, as well as this being my first summer actually caring about my lawn (i'm a noob!).

My bill just came in. I knew it was going to be astronomical based on the factors listed above; $765.44 which comes out to be about $255.15/month. Further, that's about ($56.70/month) per 1K sq ft.

Wondering where that compares to others?

I'm sure i'll be able to reduce this as i tune my sprinkler heads a bit more and as my lawn matures.
Does your bill include sewer charge ? In my area of NJ, muni water is about 0.70 cents per gallon after the monthly service charge.

greenrebellion
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Re: Water Bills!

Post by greenrebellion » September 28th, 2017, 2:31 pm

Very good point Dan...if it does include a sewer charge, OP should look into getting a separate meter for irrigation.


seiyafan
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Re: Water Bills!

Post by seiyafan » September 28th, 2017, 2:41 pm

Better to compare the cost per 1000 gallons, 'cause each place is different.

bpgreen
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Re: Water Bills!

Post by bpgreen » September 28th, 2017, 5:16 pm

Where I live, there's a base rate for the month and then they charge more if you go over a certain number of gallons. I think the base rate is $62.50.

Some years ago, they gave us the option of getting untreated unmetered irrigation water for a set annual amount (I think it varies based on the size of the lawn, and ranges from about $80 to $100, but I don't have it, so I don't know for sure). It would have cost something like $1500 to get the pipe to the property line, and then I'd have to hire a plumber to hook it up (not legal to do it by myself). And then there was a flat annual cost. The flat annual cost was only about $15 less than what I was spending on the overage charge at the time. But some of my neighbors said that it would pay for itself in 5 years. After almost everybody else got the unmetered water, the revenue from water fell drastically, so the city reset the amount where they'd start charging for additional water. At the time, there were three of us living in the house and we'd go over the minimum even during the winter. That's when I started planting alternative grasses and cutting back on watering.

That's when I started planting native and naturalized (not native, but from places with similar climate and well adapted to the area) grasses. I'm the only one living here, now, and rarely go over the minimum even in the summer. Last month was an exception because I planted some blue grama (a warm season grass) and was watering several times a day to get it to germinate. But I think my bill was less than $20 more than usual.

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ken-n-nancy
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Re: Water Bills!

Post by ken-n-nancy » September 28th, 2017, 8:14 pm

lVlrBoJang1es wrote:
September 28th, 2017, 7:49 am
My water bill comes quarterly. This is quite brutal when the 3 driest months (june/july/august here) land on the same billing cycle. ... $765.44 which comes out to be about $255.15/month. Further, that's about ($56.70/month) per 1K sq ft.
Ouch! Our water bill for our home is $0, as we are on a well. The well pump clearly uses electricity, so it isn't free, but it's nowhere near that expensive!

A complete well system (drilled artesian well, casing, well pump, etc.) typically runs about $5K to $8K in our area. I would think most of Michigan would be similar. That would give a payback within 5 years or so for you. Definitely something to consider...

smontgo150
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Re: Water Bills!

Post by smontgo150 » September 28th, 2017, 8:16 pm

Most areas here that use water from Detroit water system get a sewer "credit" during the months of summer. I inquired about getting a irrigation meter when I owned my previous home in Rochester Hills (2 houses ago) and was informed that it did not make sense.

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HoosierLawnGnome
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Re: Water Bills!

Post by HoosierLawnGnome » September 28th, 2017, 8:32 pm

greenrebellion wrote:
September 28th, 2017, 2:31 pm
Very good point Dan...if it does include a sewer charge, OP should look into getting a separate meter for irrigation.
Thats a good idea in the right scenario. I priced one out in my municipality of Indianapolis and it was actually more expensive for me to get an irrigation line. It might be different now that we have an equal sewer charge (which is major b.s. but that's another thread...)

The point is these calculations are highly dependent in your situation and municipality.

Definitely check how much water they think you used to see if it passes the smell test for what you think you used.

My wife and I once got a 3000 dollar water bill before we had our irrigation system for 1 month usage. Normally 30 at the most. We called the service center and they played the script with us about checking water leaks etc. We would have had a flooded house or street if we used that much water. It was Olympic sized pools worth, more than we used in 10 years total.

Took emails to the President and regulatory oversight committee to get the money back

Marinegrunt
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Re: Water Bills!

Post by Marinegrunt » September 28th, 2017, 10:16 pm

We we lived in town and, sewer was also added, ours was normally $130 for a family of 4. That's just normal everyday use. We didn't have irrigation and I never watered. Our water bill is now about $70 a month and it's coming from the same place. We are just on a septic now.

I'm not looking forward to getting the bill from my reno. It should be here soon though. I'm just glad we don't have to pay sewer.

lVlrBoJang1es
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Re: Water Bills!

Post by lVlrBoJang1es » October 2nd, 2017, 8:15 am

I asked about having my irrigation system installed on an "outside line" to avoid sewage charges, and the contractor informed me that it was not allowed on my county. I further verified on my county's online information...

My astronomical bill was from watering on average twice a week with about 0.5" dropped each time. I did a calibration test recently with 10 catchers in each zone and calculated the time needed to drop an average of 0.5" based on the average collected volume across all 10 catchers.

Doing a bit of math (assuming no water loss):

(My water bill is measured in (CCF) centum cubic feet - or - 1 unit = 100 ft^3, thus we'll calculate everything in cubic feet)

For simplicity, we'll start with 1" of irrigation for the entire yard. That's the same as 1/12 ft^3 of water per 1 square foot of area = 0.08333 ft^3 / ft^2.

Find cubic feet of irrigation for 1" of water over my 4500 square foot plot:
(0.08333 ft^3 / ft^2) * (4500 ft^2) = 374.985 ft ^3 of irrigation

We'll say 375 cubic feet for simplicity sake. This is the same as 3.75 CCF on my water bill. If irrigate 1/2" instead, this is 187.5 cubic feet of water consumed, or 1.875 CCF per irrigation cycle on my water bill.

My billing cycle was from 5/17 to 8/16. I started my log on 5/28 and it contains about 18 watering cycles when i average it out to 0.5" per cycle (some were deeper, some were more shallow depending on if i was watering something in, or mother nature was showing sympathy). We'll add 2 more cycles prior to account for the 2 weeks prior to when my log began = 20 cycles of about 1/2":
(20 cycles) * (1.875 CCF / cycle) = 37.5 CCF.

My normal water usage is around 10-20 CCF. I had an extra person living in my house over this period of time as well so i'll err on the high side and say we probably consumed 20 CCF in normal daily use. Total estimated water usage is then:
(37.5 CCF irrigation) + (20 CCF normal use) = 57.5 CCF consumed

My bill readout for this period was 56 CCF. Seems to make sense.


I think the part where i'm getting slammed is, as mentioned before, not being able to bypass sewage charges on my irrigation supply line... Further, i'm sure like most areas, there is a rate ($/CCF) for normal usage, and then a premium charge ($$/CCF) once you surpass a certain usage amount that's determined as excessive.

I didn't receive a hard copy of my bill in the mail during this cycle, i'll have to check my records and see what the exact charge is for both zones in the threshold.

lVlrBoJang1es
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Re: Water Bills!

Post by lVlrBoJang1es » October 2nd, 2017, 12:57 pm

I did some quick research:

For my area:

$12.306/CCF for first 20 CCF used
$14.113/CCF for every CCF used after 20

I don't have the breakdown of how much of that goes towards sewage.

seiyafan
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Re: Water Bills!

Post by seiyafan » October 3rd, 2017, 5:38 pm

Your rate is about twice as much as our village here.

Marinegrunt
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Re: Water Bills!

Post by Marinegrunt » October 4th, 2017, 7:02 pm

lVlrBoJang1es wrote:
October 2nd, 2017, 12:57 pm
I did some quick research:

For my area:

$12.306/CCF for first 20 CCF used
$14.113/CCF for every CCF used after 20

I don't have the breakdown of how much of that goes towards sewage.
Yours is comparable to ours but we don't have sewer. I'm not sure if ours is called a unit or what but it's about $0.71 a unit. It use to be about half that until our town of 2200 people put in a new 5 million dollar water treatment facility. The cost of our water doubled.

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