Just received my latest water bill. $337. Single family home. No meter. I requested a meter to be installed last year (for my benefit they said. Hmmmm :dubious:) but when they came to connect it they said they couldn’t do it because they didn’t have enough room to access the main valve with their tools. They wanted me to uninstall the downstairs toilet before they could work on it. Personally, I think they’re full of shit but that’s neither here nor there. My question is, for those of you who have meters, how much is your water bill? I know it will be different for everyone but I just want to get a general idea of how much I’d be saving with a meter. Or how much I’m getting screwed without one. (or vice versa)
Previous bill was in March. So this bill is for 5 months service
Metered, two people in a single family home. No watering of the lawn. Our first bill was in the neighborhood of $45. I think it was rounded to 3000 gallons.
I believe I get a water bill 3 times a year, they’re usually about $140 each.
It should be mentioned that I live, literally, a few blocks off of a Great Lake and I think that makes our water much cheaper. Droughts don’t effect us, we don’t have water shortages, we don’t have desalinization plants, most of the storm sewers drain directly into the lake (or nearby rivers) so they don’t have to be treated as sanitary sewage and with that, after raw sewage is treated it’s pushed out into the lake so we don’t have reservoirs to deal with.
Also, I’ve never heard of anyone not having a water meter, I’m not sure how that would work.
Wow! Water’s the cheapest utility bill we have around here in NW Arkansas (at most $70). I am also curious if the OP’s price is typical price in Chicago. I’d expect that price more in a desert, unless you just use a ton of water…
We’re in the northern suburbs of Chicago, annual bill last year was a bit over $500, more expensive in summer (we have a lawn sprinkler system) – probably would have been more like $350 - 400 without it.
About $10-15 a month, average. I live alone in a single-family 3BR house, practice xeriscaping, and do not water my lawn.
The water service here is part of the city-owned public utility. So I guess that means it’s metered – there’s an electronic smart meter that measures electricity, gas, and water usage. I think the meter “readers” drive around, capturing the data from people’s smart meters and then you get your bill.
The fire department, sewer, garbage and recycling programs are all on this same single bill I get from the city. So that’s nice – when you move here, you make one phone call and all your shit is turned on.
Located in the Land Beyond O’Hare (Chicago NW suburb). Average $40 per month for Chicago (Lake Michigan) water and local sewer. Double that during a few hot summer months.
$40 per month is $200 for 5 months and $480 per year.
Mine too. And I just looked at the bill from last August. It was $287. That’s an annual increase of about 18%. There is good news though. Homeowners age 65 and over are entitled to the Senior Exemption. That’s where you get a break on the sewer portion of the water service. I’ll be 65 in Nov. so that should reduce my next bill substantially. You do have to apply for it though. See the city of Chicago website for details.
There is also a property tax break for seniors. I guess there really is a silver lining on the cloud of old age.
I got a bill just this week for May1 - Oct31.
It is $365, single floor home @21ft wide, hose frontage 31"-62".
The water and sewer charges are within a couple bucks of each other.
This seems really high, I’m thinking of going metered.
I still don’t know what hose frontage means, I’d asked here on the board and wrote the city but nada.
Single family home in Edgewater. There’s usually four people living at home at a given moment. Paid $416 on my last bill (We don’t have a meter). I’m pretty sure I get three bills a year.
The non-metered water & sewer rate seems to be based on a couple things.
Per my recent bill, there is a box called Assessment Details and has two lines.
My bill says:
The first line describes the service address. It is a single floor, 21 foot wide building. It does make me wonder if there are other types besides ‘BLDG’ such as perhaps an empty lot with a hose spigot.
The second line is this mysterious Hose Frontage. The more I think about it, the more I suspect the double quotes are an error. Most lots here in my neighborhood (Jeff Park) are 30 feet wide but mine is oversized and would fall into the 31-62 feet bin.
Can anyone else with a Chicago bill confirm?
Anyway, it would make sense that a larger dwelling and larger lot might use more water and sewage services. However, I live alone and seldom sprinkle the lawn so metering probably makes sense for me. I just hate that you can’t go back if you guess wrong and there’s no easy way to estimate one’s actual usage.
Needless to say, the City’s Water & Sewer Rates page does nothing to clear it up and, actually, seems written to simply show the steady rate hikes over the years. It does show that a figure is calculated for water and the sewage is an ever increasing percentage of that amount. Next year is 100%!
Fake edit: I was poking around and found this link which explains things a little better: https://www.metersave.org/