g'day richard,

i ahve seen post re-paying for water but not along the lines of being
over-charged, although if that happened you may have a very hard time
proving it.

do a water audit even down to how much you use when bathing and
washing clothes etc.,. you may have to re-use some washing machine
water so may need to hold it and pump it back into the machine when
appropriate, baths can be shared 1 at a time so maybe cut the showers,
also maybe don't flush urine everytime even the 1/2 flush sytems don't
save that much.

yes look for leaks, thry this test read the meter last thing before
retiring for the night turn off any automatic water users like
toilets, save drinking water so that the taps don't get used between
the firtst read and when you read first thing the next morning this
can indicate if you have a leaky pipe or whatever. check that all taps
shut off properly a small leaks wastes lots of water over time.

yes do your own reads try and do it so that it coincides with the
water board read days, but read it each month anyway so you can get a
trend.

if you have gardens use your bath and washing machine water on the
gardens depends how far you want to go to save but urine can collected
over periods of day od night and used in the gardens also.

not sure if you are in a house but maybe you could include a rain
water tank for the garden and clothes washing??? look to nothing
smaller than 4,500 litre size that isn't a lot of water to store go up
to around 12,000 litre size if you can, electric on demand pumps
aren't super expensive and you can do all installation your self if
you are slightly handy

also is there anyway someone else could be using your water when you
aren't there? might sound silly but hey? if you suspect this then you
can get taps that need a key handle to use them makes it lots harder
for others to use the tap.

hope some of the ideas help

len

snipped
--
happy gardening
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"in the end ya' gotta do what ya' gotta do" but consider others and the environment
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