Water Consumption Calculator for Dubai and the UAE

In a flat, showers are almost always the biggest single use, and toilets are second. Together they are usually more than half the total.

The washing machine is third and it is bigger than people think, because a load is around sixty litres and most families run several a week.

Kitchen taps, dishes and cleaning add up to a steady background amount that is hard to reduce and not worth worrying about.

Drinking and cooking, which is what people picture when they think about water use, is a rounding error. A person drinks two or three litres a day out of two hundred.

In a villa with a garden, none of the above matters much. Irrigation can be more than the entire household put together during summer.

This is the difference between a flat and a villa, and it is not small.

Grass and plants in a UAE summer lose water to evaporation faster than almost anywhere. A lawn that looks green in July is being watered heavily to stay that way.

A pool loses water every day it sits uncovered, and in the hottest months that loss is substantial. A pool cover stops most of it and costs nothing to use.

Watering at the wrong time makes it worse. Water put down at midday largely evaporates before it reaches the roots. The same water at night or early morning mostly gets used.

If your bill is high and you have a garden, the garden is where to look first. Changing shower habits inside the house is worth very little by comparison.

In order of how much water each one actually saves in a UAE home.

If your usage seems far higher than this tool says it should be, the difference is often not a habit. It is a leak.

A running toilet is the most common. Water trickles from the cistern into the pan continuously and disappears down the drain. There is no puddle, no damp and often no sound.

The next is a garden line. Irrigation pipe is buried, so a split soaks into the ground and nothing appears on the surface.

Then there is a leaking joint under a floor or inside a wall. That one usually gives you a warm patch or a damp mark eventually, but not straight away.

The test costs nothing. Turn off every tap and appliance, note the water meter reading, use no water for two hours, and read it again. If it has moved, water is going somewhere it should not.

Work out your daily figure here, multiply by thirty, and compare it with the consumption on your water bill.

If they are close, you now know where your water goes and which change is worth making.

If your bill is much higher, something is being missed. Either a use that was not entered, such as a garden or frequent guests, or a leak.

If your bill is much lower, that is worth knowing too. It usually means the usage figures above are more generous than your household actually is.

Either way, the split matters more than the total. The point of this tool is to show you which one thing to change, not to give you a target.