In message , Janet Tweedy
writes
I've just had a water meter installed. Hopefully it will save on the
normal bill of about 580 pounds a year.

We had a water meter fitted when we lived in Leeds, it certainly saved
us money over paying the standard bill, even without any special effort
to cut down water use.
What sort of things can I do to cut costs as much as possible?

first, I'd say, not too worry too much. We have a decent sized garden
and grow fruit and veg, we have a greenhouse and a pond Our consumption
doesn't seem to vary much between summer and winter, which tells me that
most consumption is related to the household needs. Even things like
forgetting to turn the hose pipe off and it running all night..... And
we live in one of the drier areas of the country

I have four rain barrels, although I'm a bit worried about the need to
top up the a small pond we have, in the summer.

You can always use a barrel to fill it as well. what I do is run a hose
from a barrel into the pond when it rains and leave the barrel tap open.
Occasionally we have to use the tap, but not too often, so I don't
really worry about the cost that much (topping up a 10 sq m pond 6
inches is about 1.5 cubic metres , which would cost us about GBP 3 -
3.50). you can always get more barrels, they can be located away from
the down pipes and connected to other barrels via a fixed pip or syphon
arrangement. Though it takes a little while to get the money back in
water saved.

I do have a sprinkler and a hose so will try and not use the sprinkler
if possible.

Sprinklers can be costly in water use if you use them a lot. Lawns don't
need watering, they will go brown in longer periods of dry weather but
recover quickly once it rains. it's wasteful to water beds with a
sprinkler as you get a lot of evaporative loses, and water where you
don't need it. watering by hand, or using an irrigation system makes
better use of the water.

Is it worth putting something in the cisterns of the toilets?

If you have an old cistern yes it can be, with a more modern lower
consumption cistern no. But check how it affects the performance of the
flush. Our water co. will supply a free Hippo bag type thing.

If you have lots of baths, then having a shower instead uses a fair
amount less, obviously things like not leaving taps running and fixing
leaking taps all add together to make a bit of a difference.
--
Chris French