Wait, what? My water/waste/drainage bill is dancing around.

[MomToTwoBoys]

We've been in the house for three billing cycles. But even then, we still don't know how much we pay on average. Why? I received the most recent bill yesterday and it was for $63. That's my water, waste and drainage together. Last month, it was $160! They're trying to tell me I used 39 cubic metres of water last month, but from March 7th to April 1st, I used 4. How do I go from using 39 to using 4?

Both months were billed for the same length of time.
Both months are billed for an estimated use and then an actual use.

The only thing we changed in the last month is less water use through the toilet. We had a dual flush low-flow toilet installed in the main bathroom. I also didn't take as many baths (because I had a tattoo back in late March). But I ran the dishwasher pretty often during then and I cut back on the loads of laundry I was doing.

At any rate, this makes it really hard for me to budget properly. DH asked me last night, "So with the drop in the bill, are we back to not going into the hole?" My response? "I have to wait on the gas/electric bill before I can say that, but I know we're cutting it close."

Anyone else have issues controlling the budget when things get like this?

[monkeywrangler71]

The estimate is based on the previous owners, they were using more water than you are, so your estimate bill is way over. Then when they read the meter for the actual reading the next month you only owe a little.

That happened with our electric bill at the last house, the previous owners used twice as much as us so the estimate months were huge and the actual reading months were little, nothing, or sometimes they owed us.

If you got billed 39 on the estimate and 4 on the read, then you are probably really using about 22 a month. Ask if you can call in the meter readings for the next year so that the estimates the following year are more based in reality.

[Emjo]

If you're with Epcor, you can go to their website and enter your own meter reading...that way they will always bill you based on actual usage.

We've been in our house for about 10 months and I find every 3 or 4 months both the water/waste and power/gas bills jump way up, only to go down the next month. I think it's due to them estimating usage (in our case, underestimating). I think we use about 18-19 cubic metres of water a month.