For a long time, our monthly water bill has been in the $160 range, which seems crazy high to me.

We do have the largest garbage can, and donate to the fire department, but those things only add a few extra bucks each month. We have 5 people living in an average 4 bed/2.5 bath home.

I really started wondering about this when all my neighbors told me that their bills have never exceeded $100/mo. Is something wrong here???

$80-90 total...medium can. Sometimes a little over $100 in the summer. 4 people. 3 shower daily.

Check for running toilets, or a leak.

Definitely check as Gem said for leaks (inside or outside the house) and the toilets. I live in a condo association - my four unit building (5 adults, one child, all of us seem pretty clean) doesn't run much over $100 per month, and that includes some watering outside. Whenever we've seen high bills in any of our association's buildings, we've been able to trace it to either a leak or a running toilet.

I get irritated at how they charge for sewer services.

In the summer my water usage goes up due to lawn/garden watering, car washing, etc. yet they charge me as if I put all this water down my sewer pipe. Why can't they look at my winter sewer usage and assume it doesn't go above that in summer?

I think my 'water' bill, which includes water and sewer is running $50...

I use rain barrels for exterior watering. I have two 55-gallon barrels on two seperate [backyard] downspouts. They work great but I did have to hacksaw off my downspouts about 2-feet above the top of the barrels.

I bought plastic flexi-pieces to direct the water into the barrels and in the winter, I reconnect the downspouts with this very same flexi-piece.

This year, I am going to shop around for a simple, easy-to-connect, portable pump to get even more value out of my "free" water.

Oh, and in case you haven't been following the debacle over at the DuPage Water Commission, get ready. They just jacked up the per-thousand gallon rate up to $2.08 [from something like $1.47] to make up for their hideous accounting mistake - losing track of $40-$50 million dollars.

This will likely start hitting water bills real soon. June maybe?

I paid about $70 bucks a piece for these barrels. Google: Rain Barrels

Lots and lots of options.

My bill was $85 per week so I swapped out the old commode for a new low flow (1.3 gallons?) saved 25 bucks a week.

Excellent thread. I have a question.

In the last 3 weeks, we have had only one bag of garbage to throw out. The rest was recycling. One bag in three weeks.

Can I cancel the can all together and just throw a sticker on my one bag? If I just buy stickers for the bags I throw out, I would pay probably 1/4 of what I am paying now.

An internal mistake by the water commission. Who pays for the mistake? We do of course! Gouging the citizens starts on May 1st.

Those rain barrels are causing the mosquito abatement costs to go up!!!

I dont think that you can just put out bags. Bu t you can get a discount if you are a Sr. citizen

As for the water, check your bill for the number of gallons that you are using. Your bill sounds high, but the number of gallons is the key factor. I am a water nazi in our house. So we have an energy star dishwaher, washing machine, and we got the jet flush toliets. Also the old shower heads give a better shower but use more water.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Ted E.,

That does sound high - ours is around $60 - 70 a month. I actually got a call from the village one month because they noticed my water usage had skyrocketed - leaky toilet was the culprit.

Not a problem.

dealing with mosquitos

My rain barrels are fully screened. No skeeters at all.

And Lost: Did you really mean $85 per week? Or month?

$45.00 bucks or so, we use a HUGE garbage can. But I too am a water nazi.
On a side note our gas went down - pretty good, I might say, because we put in 'on demand' hot water. I wonder if water may go down slightly too??

Tandcg...this might be the reason for your high water bill.

So I checked our last water bill and we used 2500 gallons. We have 2 in the house M-f. And college students that frequent on the weekends.

Admiral that link is too funny! We got our cat a self circulating water fountain so we could stop running faucets.

Not sure if the cat is smart or not. Which ever it is, very funny.

Holy cow! That cat is smart. I guess now the #1 reason to always close your lid. Others =dogs drinking out of it, and 2 germs in the air. It's a habit of mine to close everything and my little ones are way too little to reach, but we're looking at new cats. I wonder if the new cat one will try this?