Oh man, I just posted this to the wrong forum! There's no way to delete it, is there?

Well I don't know what forum you were aiming for, but this seems as good of a place as any for your comments which mention shrubs. And I totally agree. It seems like I'm always watering in the drought we had this year and our bill has never been more than $25 which includes a sewer fee.

I meant to post this in the Oklahoma forum. We had record heat and extreme to exceptional drought conditions all summer, so watering plants and keeping everything alive has been a popular topic there. I was trying to only water my first-year transplanted shrubs every three days, but when it's 105-110 degrees with full sun every single day, that probably wasn't enough to give them a good start. If next year is even close to the summer we had this year (the long range climate forecasts seem to point to that possibility), I'm going to water them a lot more.

Don't forget to give them an occasional watering in the winter, too, unless rainfall cooperates.

Our water bill is always very low, too. But our next door neighbor was always out in her yard with the hose in her hand (doing more harm than good) and she complained bitterly about her two and three hundred dollar water bills. She made me promise to never, ever tell her husband that our bill was rarely over $ 30.00, at the most.

The more water you use on plants, the more you will have to use. Our lawn and landscaping looks every bit as good or better than hers with a fraction of the watering, even in the middle of the summer.

Wow, where do you people live. The town more than doubled our water bill twice in the last five years. We pay $60.00 a month just for water no sewer.
I water all plants with pond water

Frank

I would take any of your bills in a second. Ours has gone up so much, I am ready to move. Ours is more like starterdude's, but even higher. The joy of living in Northern Virginia-ha.

I think water rates vary hugely depending on which town you live in. I know there are other cities here in Oklahoma that pay a lot more than we do, and there are some that pay less. We also have no sewer fee here since we're on septic (which comes with its own interesting issues).

I think the major difference between the $15-$20 bills we had and the neighbor's $300 bills was that she was running sprinklers on her lawn, almost continuously. An acre and a half is a LOT of grass to water, so we never bother. It's bermuda, so it just goes dormant during dry spells.

I've been really impressed with how drought-tolerant some of our shrubs are. Even with the record heat and almost nonexistent rainfall, I only needed to water the established hollies, boxwoods, and photinias once or twice all summer.

miraje, you are one hundred percent correct. Home irrigation systems might be one of the worst things to enter the landscaping picture in generations. The typical home landscape will do just fine or BETTER without all of the shallow, wasteful sprinkling. If home systems were designed properly and then set correctly, I'd feel differently about it.

When someone asks me to do a xeric landscape design, they are much surprised and sometimes concerned when the choice of plant material is very little different than the typical. They expect cactus or something, lol.

Water systems have a minimum rate which is usually 1000 gallons or 2000 gallons and then will charge per 1000 gallons over the minimum. For example, if your water service has a 1k gallon minimum and it's $8 you will pay $8 for 1 gallon or 1k gallons. Then it will be $8 for the next gallon or 1k gallons. The biggest fees on a water bill will usually be garbage and sewer. Some cities also have a fire/emt fee.

Also, as water meters get older they will loose accuracy. They will always read less as they age but never read higher. I remember a lady was cussing about her water bill and demanded a new meter. Well, we changed out the meter and her bill went up $15 per month. So, be careful what you ask for.