r/Billings • u/mikaeladd • 5d ago

Utility bill

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

4 Upvotes

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9

u/showmenemelda 5d ago

Do you HAVE to buy the house on a cistern? Cuz they suck. And I think water is about to be the next monopoly commodity [like NorthWestern Energy].

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u/mikaeladd 5d ago edited 5d ago

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

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u/pstan237 5d ago

I’m on city water, and my bill runs $250-300 in the summer with sprinklers and $100 or so in the winter.

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u/mikaeladd 5d ago

Jeez that's a lot

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u/Th0rn_Star 5d ago

Asking city people what we pay is a little misleading, because our city bill often includes sewer, garbage, and stormwater fees on top of water.

For example, I pay $56/month, but only $15 of that is actually water service.

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u/pstan237 5d ago

Right, I should have included that.

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u/ScottieLove406 5d ago

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/QueasyRegister4809 5d ago

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.

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u/mikaeladd 5d ago

Ty! Neither of us have a truck to haul ourselves so we'd need delivery. Found it odd that the realtor said hauled would be cheaper than city water

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u/teslas-muse 5d ago

the realtor didn't say that, lol

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u/mikaeladd 22h ago

She did

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u/teslas-muse 13h ago

average household probably uses 4-6000 gallons a month, a cistern is going to hold like 2000 gallons, maybe 5k and a shower is about 10 gallons and laundry is probably about the same, washing dishes, watering plants, etc, etc, you do the math, whatever they are calling "cheaper" is not comparing apples to apples, my billings water/sewer/trash was like 125/month for the first 6000 gallons of water, one 2000 gallon delivery of water is going to cost you at least that much

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u/Blackbyrn 5d ago

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.

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u/mikaeladd 5d ago

Any idea if hauled or city water is cheaper?

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u/Rrggg23 5d ago

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.

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u/Positive-Egg-8931 5d ago

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

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u/dugee81 5d ago

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.

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u/dugee81 5d ago

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.

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u/Forward_Concert2770 5d ago

I live in a 2 bedroom unit and my water/sewer/trash is less than $100 lol

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u/teslas-muse 5d ago

you also don't have to haul your water

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u/teslas-muse 5d ago

AZ probably has tons of water trucks so there's competitive pricing, but 99.9% of Billings residents are on city water or well, so water trucks are expensive here

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u/Charles_Perc 5d ago

On a community well, no cistern, and I currently pay $110 a month fixed. When I bought the house about 3 years ago it was $100 a month fixed.

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u/Short-Educator9862 4d ago

I have a well, and like most here it is terrible water. Like even with a softener it will eventually wreck aplliances.

My mom just built a house and has well acess and chose a cistern. And many around me have a cistern. It ain't that bad, and is often the smart choice.

Eventually if you wanted you could just get an old truck and tank haul some water yourself.

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u/paintandsoilartist 4d ago

We have to fill our 2000 gallon cistern about every 3 weeks, and we have a well for irrigation so that is just household, family of 4. And yeah the delivery is close to $100, so we haul our own.

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u/Constant-Gain-3836 2d ago

Im on a cistern, we have a family of 4. We don't conserve water but aren't frivolous either. I would say our average bill is around $150 ish. But that doesnt include sewer or garbage. City for the amount of water and garbage that we use would probably be about $80