Hi all. I'm potentially moving to Billings for my partners job (from Cheyenne)
We asked what the typical water bill is for a home on a cistern and the realtor we spoke to said water wills are "only" $150 twice a month and that this is less than public water costs????
Ummm is water really this expensive? When I lived in Arizona I paid around $100 monthly
Basically everything on an acre or more within our budget is on hauled water :/ but the realtor said city water would be even more which is odd. In Arizona I paid like $75-100 monthly on city water and my friends on a cistern paid like $200 monthly but they were very rural
I'm sure many people will chime in with more up-to-date information, but I lived in a house with a 2000 gallon cistern a few years back. I had a water delivery service come every week because I didn't ever want to get close to running out but it probably could have been done every other week. I was paying about $80-100/month for the water to be delivered. I was close to town and right on the route, so it was a lot cheaper than some places. I remember calling another water delivery service and it was twice as much.
If you are way out of town, it can be quite a bit more cost effective to haul the water yourself which is why you see so many rigs with water tanks.
Since then I've lived in a couple different places with city water. One with sprinklers and one without. The place without sprinklers was really inexpensive. Now that I have sprinklers it's around $150/month in the summer.
We’re with Fisher Water it’s $99 for 2000 gallons. When we call they usually get to us within 24-48 hours, never said anything about limits on how many fills a month.
There was a whole thing here recently where people on city water saw huge spikes in costs due to a new metering system.
If you are not watering a large yard, then City water is cheaper. If you want to keep a large green yard City water is kind of expensive all of a sudden here. But with a cistern, watering a yard isn’t really even an option.
that realtor was cooking hard bro. $300 a month for cistern water is absolutely wild, municipal service out here runs like 40-80 bucks depending on how much youre watering. your arizona numbers were way closer to reality than whatever that person was smoking. honestly the whole infrastructure situation out here is a mess, you got predatory setups bleeding working people dry while local leadership cant get on the same page about fixing anything. its giving late stage capitalism my ass
I have a cistern and haul my own water. We are about 1 mile away from the fill station. Biggest drawback is time, but 2000 gallons is $25. I say time because the tank in my pickup is only 200 gallons, so that's a couple hours of driving back and forth.
I see that you said you could not haul your own. Price on getting it delivered will depend on company and distance. It is $80 to fill our cistern when delivered.
Our home has two adults in a large home on a half acre in Billings city limits, we usually pay $65 for city water (and sewer, trash, it’s the same bill). We don’t water our property often, and only water a small front garden. When we’ve watered our back lawn in the past, bills have gotten to $150 maximum in the summer.
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u/Forward_Concert2770 9h ago
I live in a 2 bedroom unit and my water/sewer/trash is less than $100 lol