We are a self managed site and we have mains water, on a meter.
Most of our tenants have homes where they pay the standard water charge every year and can use as much as they want to.
Our water charges are dependant on the weather of course. We do not restrict usage, purely because we can not police it.
If we did a hose pipe ban for example, several would come on late at night or early morning when no one else is about on a dry period to water with their hoses.
At AGM meetings we have asked and found that tenants would rather pay extra 'rent' than have water restrictions. But we can not budget for the water. We simply do not know if we are going to have a wet or dry year.
We decided 5 years ago that every one would deposit £25 as a one off payment. This means that we have funds to cover a lot of use. We give back the £25 when some one leaves. The new tenant then puts their £25 in.
If the water guestimate runs over then we can do the sums and do a top up next time we sort out the yearly rent.
Meantime, the multi £25 is (or was) earning interest in a deposit account. The deposit interest, is a donation to funds.
The site is council owned but so long as we pass their yearly inspection we do not have to pay them anything. They seem happy that we are just managing to sort out, with out any cost to them, an obligation they have, to supply plots.
Note:-
Our yearly collective payment toward costs is £30 for each. That has, so far, always been enough to cover all our outgoings and give a small surplus.
I think we have got it about right but wonder if some one has a better or different system.
our water is part of the rent . but i do know that there is a meter on the suply . ive asked for another water tank to be put in and the old one replaced . we are an old war site and the old water tank was leaking so a new one was realy needed , so basicaly we are now using water rather than wasting it , ive also asked for guttering on the comunial building so that rain water can be collected .
now to my next plan
ive got this idea from a site not to far from mine
nursery lane in uxbridge uses a pit ,a deep dug pit the pit is at the lowest point of the allotment . now what they do there is let the pit fill up with water and then pump it up to a tower at the higest point of the site , then they let all the water buts fill up from the water tower, thuse not using any tap water. simmple innit . and as my site realy realy gets wet over winter and there is a dug ditch just on the outer side of the site for drainage , im thinking why not store the rain water aand use it when needed
oh and wile we are on the subject of water and butts ....
do you know that washing stuff ANY STUFF (that includes wellys spades hands and veg)in your water tank can polute your water tanks
I cross me legs and try to hold on until I get home.
I'll get my coat.
Quote from: Slug_killer on March 27, 2009, 01:09:53
I cross me legs and try to hold on until I get home.
I'll get my coat.
its all compost :D ;) ooo naturel
No mains water on our site, its all collected in water butts from shed roofs. I have a large 1000 litre water butt connected to mine that currently has about 800 litres in. But saying that i'm quite lucky, i can run a 50 metre hose pipe from the house to the allotment if things get too bad.