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Argentum
9th November 2008, 06:48 PM
I'm curious what others pay annually for water rates.

Living in the South West which has more than its fair share of rain through the winter months combined with a big wet soggy mass called Dartmoor which is a massive catchment area for all that free rain, you would think that water down here would be pretty cheap what with low population and plenty of available water. Far from it. I'm not metered and pay £600 annually which is steep. I'm considering getting a meter but have no idea what that will cost if I am doing a lot of printing and letting the water flow through washers.

What are you paying annually on metered systems and how much printing are you doing?

Mike O'Pray
9th November 2008, 07:30 PM
I am metered in the Anglian Water region and unfortunately one area's water metered charges may bear little relationship to another's. However my metered bill is nowhere near £600 p.a. I have a direct debit of £22 a month so about £264 p.a.

I need to add some qualified comments. 1. There is only the wife and I left.
2. We shower moderately and do not use baths.
3. We do have a washing machine and dishwasher. Both are probably used a couple of times a week.
4. Since we have been metered The Midlands has yet to experience a really dry spell calling for frequent hosing of garden but there have been short dry spells where the hose was used but not a sprinkler.

I have managed at this kind of level of bill for a few years and it includes power washing of a fairly large block paved area which is a major user of water. In fact I suspect that at the next reading my power washing of the block paving this autumn will result in an increase in the direct debit.

I do not do FB paper and I'd describe myself as only a moderate darkroom user overall.

Having said all that I couldn't envisage my bill rising to anywhere near £600 p.a. even if my consumption increased considerably.

Unless the South West Water Authority metered water charges are extortionate and if your circumstances are anything like mine, I'd be amazed if getting a meter didn't reduce your bill.

Mike O'Pray

B&W Neil
9th November 2008, 08:00 PM
I'm curious what others pay annually for water rates.

Living in the South West which has more than its fair share of rain through the winter months combined with a big wet soggy mass called Dartmoor which is a massive catchment area for all that free rain, you would think that water down here would be pretty cheap what with low population and plenty of available water. Far from it. I'm not metered and pay £600 annually which is steep. I'm considering getting a meter but have no idea what that will cost if I am doing a lot of printing and letting the water flow through washers.

What are you paying annually on metered systems and how much printing are you doing?

Hi,

Unfortuantely the South West has probably the most expensive water charges in the UK. The reason often given is that we have the most coast line to keep clean (it is not all about supplying water) for the holiday makers! I was amused by a suggestion made on Radio Cornwall a short while ago that maybe a 'clean beach' charge should be made on the Devon / Cornwall borders, on all incoming tourists, as they made more use of the beaches than the locals :D I would rather not think about our water rate bill is (we are not on a meter) but it is in excess of £600. However, I do have a large garden, a green house, a polytunnel and two Nova print washers that all need water and as we don't want to move out of Cornwall - we just pay up :slap:

Neil.

Dave miller
9th November 2008, 08:04 PM
We are paying £23 a month. As far as I can see this equates to about 85 cubic metres a year. Hope that helps.

B&W Neil
9th November 2008, 08:09 PM
We are paying £23 a month. As far as I can see this equates to about 85 cubic metres a year. Hope that helps.

Dave,

How much coastline is there around Northamptonshire ? ;)

Neil.

Trevor Crone
9th November 2008, 08:40 PM
I'm not on a meter yet; my London water rates is £243/annum. We don't have a coast line but we do have the Thames:)

Mike O'Pray
9th November 2008, 08:41 PM
Folklore has it that we used to have one of the Great Lakes on loan in Northants but over the summer of '76 it shrunk and became Pitsford Reservoir. It is further said that we have had to commit to N America to restoring it back to full size and then towing it across.

So far we've failed. George Bush is convinced it was Lake Huron that we had and therefore his property and that's why he got away with using "Yo Blair" as a greeting. We can only hope that Barack is more balanced as he lives on Huron's shores and knows it's still there by Chicago.

Pitsford actually contains the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald but in our case it was a 19th century depressed poacher who one night realised that the Carlsberg brewery would take a 100 years to get to Northampton and that until the grave he'd be forced to drink Phipps ales, so threw himself in.

Northamptonshire - landlocked but full of imaginative people

Mike

Dave miller
9th November 2008, 08:52 PM
Folklore has it that we used to have one of the Great Lakes on loan in Northants but over the summer of '76 it shrunk and became Pitsford Reservoir. It is further said that we have had to commit to N America to restoring it back to full size and then towing it across.

So far we've failed. George Bush is convinced it was Lake Huron that we had and therefore his property and that's why he got away with using "Yo Blair" as a greeting. We can only hope that Barack is more balanced as he lives on Huron's shores and knows it's still there by Chicago.

Pitsford actually contains the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald but in our case it was a 19th century depressed poacher who one night realised that the Carlsberg brewery would take a 100 years to get to Northampton and that until the grave he'd be forced to drink Phipps ales, so threw himself in.

Northamptonshire - landlocked but full of imaginative people

Mike

I'm not sure what you're on tonight Mike; but could you spare a drop? ;)

Argentum
9th November 2008, 09:09 PM
Hi,
The reason often given is that we have the most coast line to keep clean (it is not all about supplying water) for the holiday makers!

Yes we have lots of coastline but if I'm not mistaken, its the council who keep the beaches clean. The water companies just pump raw sewage into the sea so they keep their costs down by not processing it. A friend of mine used to work for the Water Research Council and they did a study of all the outflows around the country. In my area, there is a huge outflow that pumps raw sewage out just off start point. The local council know when to do their "blue flag beach testing" so that tides are in their favour and the sewage is being moved in the opposite direction.

Pure myth that beaches have anything to do with water costs. Its because the native population is very low. Whilst it mutiplies several times over during the summer causing a lot of extra "movements", those movements are not charged for. Simple solution is to put turd counters in the down pipe of all holiday accomodation and charge for them. :D

B&W Neil
9th November 2008, 09:27 PM
I'm not on a meter yet; my London water rates is £243/annum. We don't have a coast line but we do have the Thames:)

Trevor,

Indeed - and a good point. Maybe you have more people living up there which helps keeps the water rates down :)

Neil.

B&W Neil
9th November 2008, 09:37 PM
Hi,

Don't quote me as I'm not the expert in this but my understanding is the water / sewerage companies have to upgrade their outfall systems to comply to the regs for safe swimming beaches. Hence the extra cost for areas with a lot of coastline. However, I am sure this is just another con from the powers that be :eek:

Neil.

Mike O'Pray
9th November 2008, 09:42 PM
Well Dave, I am on Yorkshire Tea, the one especially made for hard water areas. Got it in Sainsbury's in Market Harborough just over the border. It meant dodging the customs at East Farndon but what the heck, a good tea is worth a bit of risk. Beats Robert Mitchum's White Lightning on "Thunder Road". The banjo pickers aren't as good though.

I like stories. The last time I told a story about the '45 Rebellion to the local kids they were all ready to raise the Jacobite Standard at the head of the Daventry Reservoir. Marching to Loch Shiel woud have made them too late for bed. Mind you, not such a trek to London the next day to overthrow the Hanoverian monarchy

Mike

Les McLean
9th November 2008, 10:29 PM
We don't pay a water rate for we have a spring water supply that is fed by all the rain that falls on the Cheviot Hills. The water is excellent for drinking, generally very clean although sometimes we can have it coloured by peat after very heavy rain so I have to be careful about printing during those times, I have had prints ruined by staining while washing. The one big downer is that during a dry summer the spring can dry up and water has to be imported by bowser, luckily that doesn't happen very often.

Argentum
10th November 2008, 12:09 AM
Sounds handy for warm toning prints Les;)

B&W Neil
10th November 2008, 08:56 AM
We don't pay a water rate for we have a spring water supply that is fed by all the rain that falls on the Cheviot Hills. The water is excellent for drinking, generally very clean although sometimes we can have it coloured by peat after very heavy rain so I have to be careful about printing during those times, I have had prints ruined by staining while washing. The one big downer is that during a dry summer the spring can dry up and water has to be imported by bowser, luckily that doesn't happen very often.


Sounds good Les - an excellent arrangement. I can see a few old bore - holes and springs around here being put back to use if our water charges keep on increasing ;)

Neil.

Mark Burley
26th November 2008, 11:07 PM
Wow - £600 that seems like a lot. I think we pay around £25 or so a month. Having said that I think the water guardians will investigate me soon.

Nova washer and endless pressure washing should see me drowning in Anglia water bills soon I should think.

Mark

wiesmier
27th November 2008, 11:03 AM
Well, not sure what the water bill is here actually. Will have to do some digging around.
It rains a lot here. The whole place is like a big sponge - even if you are up on a hill you can be up to your waist in water. Having said that, earlier this year we had an unprecedented 2 months of sunshine with no rain at all and the freshwater lochs were very low so much so that Harris [the bottom part of Lewis and Harris] were running short of water.
These days our water is clear from the taps but dark brown in the streams and rivers - you can see the difference on the beaches where the brown stained freshwater meets the clear sea. The water board is spending a lot of time and money upgrading the water and sewerage here. In fact, the plant at the end of the village has been worked on constantly for the last two years!
BTW; its raining this morning!

Bob
27th November 2008, 02:52 PM
My last yearly bill was about £280 so Thames Water seems to not be quite as bad as some - much to my considerable surprise...

I guess that it must be cheaper to supply water to people crammed together in London than to the natives scattered about in their huts in deepest, darkest, Norfolk and other far-flung colonies even further away from civilisation... :cool:

I did read a few years ago that it costs from about £1,500 (but can increase considerably due to local conditions) to have a bore-hole drilled to find water and that there are few places where you won't hit water eventually.

photomi7ch
4th January 2009, 07:03 PM
I'm not on a meter yet; my London water rates is £243/annum. We don't have a coast line but we do have the Thames:)

when I lived in London my meterd rate was a hundred pound a year most of that cost was standing charge and I used loads of water. where I live now it costs me that for six months not impressed shouldnt have moved before anyone else says it.

Richard Gould
4th January 2009, 10:03 PM
In Jersey I pay about 4pound per week which works out at about 208 per year, but it's going up about 2.5 % from april Richard

Andrew Bartram
7th January 2009, 04:20 PM
We don't pay a water rate for we have a spring water supply that is fed by all the rain that falls on the Cheviot Hills. The water is excellent for drinking, generally very clean although sometimes we can have it coloured by peat after very heavy rain so I have to be careful about printing during those times, I have had prints ruined by staining while washing. The one big downer is that during a dry summer the spring can dry up and water has to be imported by bowser, luckily that doesn't happen very often.

Must be a bit like London Water then:)....

We are supplied by the quaintly named Cambridge Water Company and pay £34 each month for Water and Sewerage.

Four of us in the house all have daily showers, dishwasher on each day, washing machine most days, hosepipe occaisionally as we have two water butts.
Nova Archival 12 X 16 print washer at times when the water is warm enough (fed from outside tap) and I have enough time for FBs

Hope that helps