New Mars Forums

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,365

Water Price of Potable water around Earth

In another part of the forum, the price of hydrocarbon fuel has been an ongoing subject of reporting and discussion.

The price of potable water varies around the world, from nothing where it still flows freely, to a high value as set by Walmart.

The price of a container of drinking water at Walmart varies.  As of 2022/08/20, here is a snapshot:

Great Value Purified Drinking Water, 16.9 Fl Oz, 40 Count ...
https://www.walmart.com › ... › Water › Purified Water
price of water at walmart from www.walmart.com
Great Value Purified Drinking Water, 16.9 Fl Oz, 24 Count · $3.48. current price $3.48. 0.9 ¢/fl oz ; Pure Life Purified Water, 16.9 Fl Oz, Plastic Bottled Water ...
Brand: Great Value
Assembled Product Weight: 45.6 lbs
Sodium: 0
Protein: 0g
Rating: 4 · 5,088 reviews · $5.36 · $5.99 delivery · In stock

Great Value Water - Walmart.com
https://www.walmart.com › Food › Beverages › Water
Great Value Water ; Great Value Purified Drinking Water, 16.9 Fl Oz, 40 Count Bottles · $5.36. current price $5.36. 0.8 ¢/fl oz · 5088 ; Great Value Purified ...

Water Bottled Water - Walmart.com
https://www.walmart.com › ... › Water › Bottled Water
Water Bottled Water ; Great Value Purified Drinking Water, 16.9 Fl Oz, 24 Count · $3.48. current price $3.48 ; DASANI Purified Water Bottles Enhanced with Minerals ...

The price of water from a company that specializes is providing drinking water is also variable.

A snapshot on 2022/08/20 is:

Image result for price of culligan bottled water
Summary: Culligan Water Delivery Service Prices. A single 5 gallon drinking water from Culligan costs $12 delivered. If you order 3 or more 5 gallons the price drops to $7 each. Renting a Culligan water cooler runs an additional $12 per month.Oct 10, 2019

How Much Does Culligan Water Delivery Service Cost?
https://www.kompareit.com › business › office-water-deli...

The price of water on Mars will vary as well, depending upon a number of factors, but there ** is ** one distinction.  There is NO location on Mars where water is free, as is still the case in a very small number of locations on Earth.

In order for this topic to be useful for both reporting and comparison, costs need to be given in common units.

A suggestion is to compute the price per metric ton.

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,365

Re: Water Price of Potable water around Earth

Taking the example of Walmart as a guide:

From post: http://newmars.com/forums/search.php?se … 1153411855

We have:

1 metric ton of fresh water, divided by 12, gives 83 lots at $10.00 (USD) each, for a grand total of $830.00

For Culligan's price of $12 for 5 gallons of drinking water, and extending to a metric ton, we have:

From Google:

Updated December 14, 2020. By Andrew Cross. A tonne, or metric ton, is a single unit of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms or 2,204.6 pounds. This unit is the approximate mass of a cubic meter of water at 4 degrees Celsius.Dec 14, 2020

How to Convert Gallons to Metric Tons - Sciencing
https://sciencing.com › ... › Fundamentals of Physics
5 gal (US)    0.0066840278 ton reg

My calculator came up with a price per ton of Culligan water as:

1795.324669356 or $1796 for a ton, including containers, compared to Walmart at $870, including plastic containers

(th)

kbd512

Administrator

Registered: 2015-01-02

Posts: 7,852

Re: Water Price of Potable water around Earth

tahanson43206,

City of Houston charges a minimum of $12.50 for 0 to 10,000 gallons of potable water usage per month.  If each family of 4 uses 75 gallons per day, then that works out to 9,000 gallons per month, which means you get charged the minimum bill for the service.  That means you pay $0.00125, or 1/125th of a cent per gallon delivered.  This is for potable water usage only, not waste water treatment / return to the city.

From Google (June 22, 2021):

The typical single-family home in Houston gets billed for 3,000 gallons a month. Right now, their monthly water and wastewater charges are just over $27.  Starting July 1, their bill goes up by $4 and some change. By April 2026, the typical customer will pay more than $48 a month.

$35 sounds about right for the minimum bill.  McDonald's pays $15 per hour, so 2 hours of work for someone starting out.  In our case, it equates to 15 minutes of work, or 30 minutes if only including one of our salaries.  I can easily work 80 hours per week to get things done, so in reality it equates to 1 hour of my work time.  Most of my meals are canned soup or ham and cheese sandwich, so I worked out that I spend $3 to $4 per meal, on average.  Fast food is the same cost, roughly speaking, unless you get something really expensive, then it could be $10 to $15 per meal.  I eat twice per day, although I can see younger folks or folks doing harder physical labor requiring 3 meals per day.

To be brief, let's say you need a minimum of $400 per month for water and food.  At $15/hr, you make $30,000 per year if you work 2,000 hours.  Uncle Sam and local taxation takes about 25% of what you make at that salary level, or $7,500 per year.  That gives you $22,500 to play with.  You have to eat and drink every day to work and be healthy, so $4,380 per year.  That leaves only $18,120 for everything else, or $1,510 per month.  That covers rent, utilities, and clothing pretty easily.  Basically, I didn't buy anything unless I really needed it.  I didn't have "the best" of anything, but didn't care, either.  What I had was good enough to get the job done, and that's what matters.

Life is supposed to be a constant struggle, so that you remember you're in constant fight against nature to survive.  If it's not, then you're doing it wrong.  Adversity makes you stronger.  Anyone wonder why Elon Musk sold off all his personal possessions and lives in a studio apartment with only a car to drive to work?  That's why he did it- to remind him of his purpose and what he must always do.

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,431

Re: Water Price of Potable water around Earth

Lots of benchmarks for water depending on size and name branding of it as you can also have several types from spring to distilled. Perrier Carbonated Mineral Water. 8.45 fl oz. DASANI Purified Water. 16.9 fl are just some that come to mind. Of course, then again you can buy it with a bit of flavor as well. Then there is the ready to use cold that will change the price as well.
The Market basket brand for a gallon of what is labeled spring water is 75 cents a gallon where the Poland spring brand is selling much higher....

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,365

Re: Water Price of Potable water around Earth

For kbd512 re #3 ... thank you for quotes on the price of water in Houston ...

I'll try to convert that to price per ton at the first opportunity.

For SpaceNut re #4 ... thank you for the quote of 75 cents per gallon a Market Basket !!!

Given the Culligan quote: For Culligan's price of $12 for 5 gallons of drinking water, and extending to a metric ton, we have:

Market Basket would be offering 5 gallons for $3.75 but that's without delivery.

The price would include five plastic containers.

Per my calculator, a metric ton contains 149.6+ gallons of water, so the Market Basket price is $561 and change

That is the best price I've seen so far, for commercially produced and distributed drinking water.

Part of the cost is quality control, which is assumed to be present in municipal supply situations.

However, municipal water supply departments are having to deal with intake water quality issues.

I'm assuming commercial providers have the opportunity to select intake with some discretion, so that the quality of the consumer product is more likely to be high.

In any case, Mars water suppliers are going to be dealing with contaminated "natural" input, and human generated water for recycling.

Cost of water on Mars is going to include the most extreme water quality control measures that might be imagined.

I am encouraging this topic because it seems (to me at least) that commercial opportunities to provide clean drinking water are going to increase in the years ahead, as municipal systems are overwhelmed.

(th)