On your water bill, it will tell you how much water you used that month but sometimes it is in cubic feet. Ours is in cubic feet and I had no idea how to convert that to gallons, so the search began for answers. I found this conversion information on the EPA website: http://www.epa.gov/watersense/our_water/understanding_your_bill.html That told me that one CCF (Centum Cubic Feet) is equal to 748 gallons. One CCF is one hundred cubic feet. Our average water usage for a month is 700 cubic feet and that is equal to 7 CCFs. I now had the formula to find out how many gallons - 7 CCFs x 748 gallons = 5,236 galllons.
Our Family's Average Water Usage700 cubic feet = 5,200 gallons a month
The average family of 4 has an average water usage of 1600-2000 cubic feet a month, which is about 12,000-15,000 gallons per month. We are using less than HALF the amount of the average family and that explains why our bill is $20-$25 a month. The average for one person is 100 gallons a day or 3,000 gallons a month. So at 3,000 gallons per person, you can estimate easily for your average depending on your family size. For example, a family of 6 would use an average of 18,000 gallons of water a month.
Who knew we were such big water savers? I don't really have any tips because I don't know what we are doing that others aren't. I do know that we are mindful of water usage in that we don't let water run for no reason. Here is a chart of the average number of gallons certain things in your home use that may be helpful in cutting costs and the website also provides some links to calculators: http://water.usgs.gov/edu/qa-home-percapita.html
