Average Water Usage? What’s Yours?

Paying bills is always a chore. If I manage to get a check off before a bill is late, that’s a big success. I hate paying bills to faceless corporations that espouse values I don’t support. However, my water bill actually makes me happy to pay because I believe everyone should pay for their impact on the environment. This belief most especially applies to corporations.

Big corporations have a blank check from the government to consume, abuse, and destroy the environment without paying a single dime for the resources they squander. When I pay for my family water use, I’m paying for the resources I consumed. When my water bill goes up, I have no complaints.

How Much is Your Water Worth?

Today was the first time since moving back to California that I actually read the bill.

Last month I used 3000 gallons of water!

Water is so cheap I’ve never noticed the shocking volume of water I’m using. Water in California costs me about 1.4 cents per gallon. That’s about 5-6 cents to flush a toilet. This month, I’m going to make more of an effort to stop wasting so much clean, fresh water.

How much do you use?

This is where you come in, I could look up government statistics on the Internet, but I’d really like to know how much water like-minded folks use. I have a family size of 2 and we used 2992 gallons last month. Post a comment and share your numbers if you can find them. If you’re like me and you have no idea how much you use, please post that!

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Comments About Average Water Usage? What’s Yours?

// 7 comments so far.

Charles Hand // March 19th 2010

Taxes and fees here in Maryland are through the roof. I can’t bear to look at the bills any longer than it takes to pay them so they don’t come and shoot me and take my house. I don’t even know if water is metered.

Of course, when we say “pay for water” we’re talking about paying for the machines that steer the water to our home (plus whatever graft the gov appends). Unlike corn or natural gas, water is water before and after we use it. It’s a relatively tight recycling path.

In Medford, Or, they give tours of the water system. It’s fascinating. In Medford, part of the water comes from mountain springs, and part from the river. They take you all the way up to top of the mountains and show you the old aquaducts. They take you down to the river and show you the big processing plant, and they show you diagrams of the city piping and pumping system. I’ve felt real good about paying for water delivery since experiencing that tour back in Oregon.
Alex // March 19th 2010

I don’t pay for water, the association does, and then twice a year we get together to talk about bills the building has but no special interest is placed on water. I pay more attention next time we come to it. What I do know is that I shower for like an hour, just soaking, no every day but often. I remember when I was a kid, at home we would use water to wash the car or to water the lawn, to clean the floors and such, there was water everywhere and for everything. Now not so much, no lawn or space to wash the car and the floors are treated more carefully, just the shower.
Greg // March 19th 2010

I too am guilty of extremely long showers. I’m going to try to cut back for 30 days and post my numbers on the next bill.

Arcata apparently has a progressive waste water treatment plant, but I honestly know nothing about it. I know in Eureka, CA the sewage plant doesn’t have enough capacity for the water when it rains, so the overflow is pumped directly into the ocean. It’s only a problem if you like the beach.

Thanks for the informative replies, it’s amazing how different things are from state to state.
Les // March 19th 2010

A bit off-topic, but why on earth do we continue to package and distribute bottled water via freight? Water is heavy stuff. I guess I wouldn’t complain to find bottles of it in parts of Mexico, but in the USA? Marketing strategies seem to work for many people; just to think that things that come in packages must be safe and clean. Somebody’s looking out for us.
Chandelle // March 20th 2010

I have no idea how much water we use. Our landlord pays for our water so I don’t even know how much it costs (but we’re in Mendocino County, not too far from you in Arcata, so it’s probably the same).

We do try to be careful, but definitely not careful enough. We don’t flush all the time. We do the yellow/brown thing and everyone we know around here does the same. We take pretty short showers – 5-10 minutes. We consolidate showers by taking in our kids at the same time. We turn off the water when we brush our teeth and so forth. We only do very large loads of laundry. But then we’re really wasteful in other ways – like I leave the water running when I wash the dishes. I take a lot of baths. Stuff like that.

We’re moving this summer and we’ll have a big garden in our new place, so we’ve been talking about saving our greywater for watering.

California actually has some pretty serious water concerns, so it always baffles me that water conservation isn’t more widely discussed. I grew up in Arizona and it was the same way. Some huge proportion of Arizona’s water is brought in from other states and stored by damming and yet there’s water, water everywhere without a mention of conservation. Where I grew up, everyone had a green lawn all year round. In the desert. And don’t get me started on all those golf courses.

I’ve known for a long time that this is something that deserves more attention in my life, but I always feel overwhelmed with all that I’m trying to do already. I’m hoping to pay more attention to it when we move and have more control over our water supply and waste.
Joseph Lavin // March 20th 2010

From My Bill, last month. 2 Bedroom house, 2.5 bath. 3 People living in the house, with 3 dogs and 2 chinchillas.

408 ft³ = 3052.051 gal(US Liq)
Pat // June 21st 2010

This is my water usage from my bill that covers March, April and May: 11 CCF (8228 gallons). This equals 2742 gallons per month for 2 people, 2 dogs, 1 bird. I take “Navy” showers (turn water on, suds up, rinse off), practice “if it’s yellow, it’s mellow” for 3 or 4 flushes with low-flow toilets, and have drought-resistant landscaping, so would have expected this to be less. Room for improvement!