Latest water bill

I received our latest water bill this morning, it averaged out at 0.74 kL a day (148 litres per person) over the previous period. Not great, but a big improvement on the 1.09 kL average use for the same period last year! It was slightly down on our last quarter which was 0.76 kL per day, but still *way* above the 0.59 kL average use in my billing area. Bummer :-( I'd like to know the statistics for my local area, particularly how many people occupy each house on average (we have five)? According to the Water Corporation website, the average water use in Australia is around 200 litres per person per day, of which around 10 litres are used for drinking and food preparation. The rest is used on washing (including the toilet and showering/ bathing) and the garden.

It's another 6 weeks or so until my rainwater tank is due to arrive (and then we will have to install it, so that will take longer), I wish it were sooner! It will be interesting to see if it has any significant effect on my next water bill though, for the remaining couple of months of that billing period.

Anyway, it looks like the only way we are going to start making siginificant savings is by bucketing water more than we do now. I have a bucket in the shower that I use in the washing machine, but it looks like I'm going to have to start bucketing the kids' bathwater too. That will be good for my muscles ;-) And I'm going to have to work on DH and his water use in the kitchen... I wish we had a better water meter so I could get a more accurate look at our water use on a daily basis - the small dials that show the litres used are obscured on my meter :-( - so I could have a look before and after doing the washing for instance, and after the morning showers, shaving etc. I'm sure if I requested a new one from the water supplier they'd charge me a fortune for it!

There's an excellent website, SaveWater.com.au, that's worth checking out for a great range of tips. I had another look to see if I could pick up some more tips to add to the ones I am already using, and came up with these ideas:

* Try and convince DH to save the water from the sink when waiting for the hot water to heat when shaving and doing the washing up.
* Put a bucket under the sink for emptying water into, e.g. from waiting for the hot water to heat up, steaming vegetables, leftover in water bottles, for use on the garden.
* Install a flow limiter on the bathroom tap.
* Put a step-stool next to the toilet so that the kids can reach the half flush button more easily (it is on the wall side of the toilet, so they tend to use the full flush button which is closer).
* Reuse some of the wash water from the first load of washing on the subsequent load (this is limited by the small size [40L] of my laundry tub).
* Bucket the bathwater into the washing machine for the next day's washing (or do one load at night), providing my one year old hasn't pooed in it, LOL.