Sewage costs & evaporation

[Tineebubbles]

I have read that approximately 10% of the water we use stays in the clothes and/or evaporates. My sewage bill is directly related to how much water I use. As with all utilities my water and sewer just went up in price again. Do any of you get a discount on your sewage for this evaporation?? Are there any facts or studies I can see that may help me reduce my sewage bill.

[CanCanCase]

The CLA has a "Water Evaporation Allowance Toolkit" with most of the information you'll need, along with a PowerPoint show (to use when giving your pitch to the water utility.)

It's over in the resources section for members, so be sure your membership is current, log in, download and go for it!

-Case

[MrMachine]

The NYC DEP will give an evaporation allowance, provided you are directly paying the city through your own water meter and not a sub meter branched out by a commercial landlord.
It's only 5% though.

[Howard]

5% is a great deal, as there is no way that 5% of the water stays in the clothing. Let's take a typical 35# washer that uses 70 gallons of water. That means you consume 586 pounds of water in a full wash. 5% of that is just over 29# of water. I don't believe that the fully spun clothing contains over 29 pounds of water.

[KJ]

Originally Posted by Howard

5% is a great deal, as there is no way that 5% of the water stays in the clothing. Let's take a typical 35# washer that uses 70 gallons of water. That means you consume 586 pounds of water in a full wash. 5% of that is just over 29# of water. I don't believe that the fully spun clothing contains over 29 pounds of water.

A couple years back we did some testing. Nothing scientific or anything.
Just did some random 35# loads of mixed clothing.
The average weight was about 50#'s wet so our machines left about 15 pounds of water (slightly less than 2 gal.) in the clothing.
At our machines water usage (approx 80 gal) it came out to about 2.5%

When we did a Toploader 12-14 pounds of laundry came out approx 5-6 pounds wetter. 5-6 pounds left out of our 34 gallon tops averaged 1.8-2.2%.

So I would agree with Howard, 5% seems like a good deal
especially if you have higher extract washers in a store.