Water company raising bill any solutions?

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Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Feb 9, 2013
361
3
33
Marietta, Ohio
My city has decided that the water bill for my area will be going up 47% in the next months and I am looking for any solutions to help find a way to lower my bill when doing water changes on my 220 planted tank. What do you guys use besides straight tap water? Anyone use rain water as a solution? Any help appreciated.
 
At my hatchery, we reclaimed rain water from our metal roof. Rain ran off the roof to gutters leading to 4 55gal drums at the 4 corners. Water from the drums drained to a 2500 gallon buried tank. Water from the tank was pulled through a 5-stage whole house filtration system leading to a several circulation holding tanks in the hatchery where the water was aerated until reaching the room's ambient temperature (The hatchery was heated instead of heating individual tanks). This water was used to replenish after filter back-flushing, gravel-washing, or just refilling the sumps after evaporation or bagging fish.
I still used filtered municipal water, when the holding tanks got low but, my cisterns saved me about 70-75% of my usual annual municipal water use.
 
On a much smaller scale I'm going through the same thing. At the expense of my arms and back, I've been watering my yards with old tank water, in addition to normal water conserving procedure. These dang Discus want a water change every day, yes I'm tired :( but I hope in the near future I can streamline my water change routine. Here you're given a short amount of time to water your lawn till you're fined, so I got one of the greenest, if not THE greenest house on the block :)
 
I just use two water which is pretty expensive around me since my area has the best water treatment plant in the state. I'd use rainwater but it's to acidic for the majority of fish I keep. I'd use well water if that was an option though.
 
Here where I live the water company will give us a discount for watering your lawn.
 
Best way to reduce the bill. Sell the tank. Other than that it is as it is, pay the bill each month.
 
Go to city council meetings, make FOIA requests to be sure tbe rate hike is justified. Maybe the water system is stressed because developers building houses aren't ponying up money to compensate for the load they're adding to city infrastructure--happens where I live. 47% sounds extreme.

Why a huge jump at once like that? The city didn't see this coming and raise rates slowly over time? Why not? Try to find the group of existing commercial land lords in your town who aren't happy about this and help them make waves.

Gather rain water.

See if your municipality will meter your sewage. Where I live, they'll do that so you don't pay for more for waste water than u should. Our water bill is so much a gallon for water that we bring in the house, and so much a gallon for water that drains out to sewage. So they assume those amounts are equal and bill you. But, people with lawn irrigation, or fish tanks, can meter their sewage and get a little break cause their sewage is much less than tbe inbound water.


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I use fish tank water to flush toilets, and to water garden, lawn, add water to the pond and water indoor plants.
Especially in summer, all fish water is used twice, total gallons of tanks are @ 1000 .
I also collect rain water.
 
How do you do the toilets with tank water? That would be huge.
 
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