In today’s story, a couple moves in next to another couple in a duplex, and there are two outdoor faucets.

The new homeowners assume the faucet on their side is connected to their water meter and thus their water bill, but the next door neighbors keep using the faucet as if it’s theirs.

Eventually the new neighbors decide to call them out on it, but they wonder if that was a mistake.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

AITA for telling my neighbor to use their own water?

Some background my wife and I moved to a duplex last month.

We’ve lived in apartments our whole lives and never had to pay for water/sewer/garbage and now we do.

We haven’t gotten our utility bill yet (comes every two months) and I’m dreading the number.

They noticed that the neighbor was using a faucet that he assumed was connected to his water meter.

There is a detached garage building at the front of the lot.

On this garage unit are two faucets, one on their side and one on ours.

When we moved in, there was a hose already attached to our side so I thought the previous tenant just left it and bought myself a nozzle.

We recently noticed that the neighbor’s wife will use that hose several times a week to water the garden area and wash shoes.

I was looking for the right time to ask them about this and it just so happened today she walked by while I was building a shelf in the garage.

They asked the neighbors who’s meter the faucet was connected to.

I asked if the faucet was connected to our meter or theirs and she said she’d ask the husband.

He came out a few minutes later and asked what the problem was.

I asked the same question and he said we can check by closing the valves on our side.

He added I was the first to ask and the previous two neighbors never made a big deal out of it and that his wife only used it to water the front lawn.

But here the wife interjected and confessed she washed shoes a few times a week (which she had to as I was just there 10 minutes before when she was washing shoes).

He cut her off and said “No, you don’t, you never wash shoes”.

It turns out that he was right about the faucets.

Lo and behold that faucet is attached to our water meter.

I asked if the hose was his to which he answered yes and then he asked if I would like to move the hose to the other faucet to which I nodded.

I could tell he was pretty upset from the earlier comments and he was continually grumbling stuff like: “oh ok since you want to be so strict”, “my wife only uses like 3 cents of water”, “i was gonna give you a power washer to help wash your car but ok I guess not”, and stuff like that.

They wonder if it was wrong to make a big deal about the faucet.

Guess he was pretty flustered as he couldn’t unscrew the hose. He came back with a wrench and still couldn’t do it.

While he was gone a second time, I unscrewed the hose (he probably loosened it, I’ll give him that), took my nozzle off, and screwed the hose onto his faucet.

When he came back, he saw it was done then talked to me a little about putting a “Smile, You’re on Camera!” sticker to our backyard door.

He was concerned about dog walkers not cleaning up after their pets on our front lawn (I obliged and the sticker is on our yard door).

Should I have just let them use our water? She doesn’t really use too much and he could be right about the 3 cents (ballpark).

[The way I read the water billing here we pay $5.29 per CCF for the first 10 CCF, $6.17 per unit thereafter].

It seems like the faucet setup was pretty obvious.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted…

This reader doesn’t think OP should pay for his neighbor’s water.

Another reader points out that the neighbor DOES think it’s a big deal.

Watering the lawn can be pretty expensive.

This person points out that they will be able to figure out just how much the neighbor’s water use really cost.

The neighbors knew full well what they were doing.

No one is buying the innocent act.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.