Dripping tap cost calculator

Why a drip costs more than it looks

A single drip is nothing. A drip every second, all day, every day for a year, is thousands of gallons — and you pay for every one of them twice if your sewer charge is calculated on the water you use, which it usually is.

The reason people ignore it is that the cost never arrives as a bill for the tap. It arrives spread across four quarterly bills, each slightly higher than it should be, in a way that is almost impossible to notice.

How to measure it properly

Put a cup under the tap and count the drips for fifteen seconds, then multiply by four. That is your drips per minute, and it beats guessing by a long way — the difference between a slow drip and a fast one is a factor of ten in the final number.

If the water is running rather than dripping, this is the wrong tool. Time how long it takes to fill a measured container instead, because a trickle wastes far more than any drip rate can express.

The charge most people forget

Most water bills have two parts: what you use, and a sewer or wastewater charge calculated from what you use. A leak inflates both. If you only enter the water rate here, the real cost is likely to be meaningfully higher than the figure shown — so add the two rates together for an honest answer.

A hot tap costs more again

If the tap that drips is the hot one, you are also paying to heat every drop that goes down the drain. This calculator counts the water only, so treat its answer as the floor rather than the full cost.