2,500L vs 5,000L: Which Water Delivery Should You Choose?

Start with your tank, not your budget

The first question is not which load is better value. It is which load your storage can physically accept. Ordering 5,000 litres into a 2,500 litre tank means paying for water that ends up on the driveway.

Most Harare households run a standard poly storage tank of either 2,500 or 5,000 litres, sometimes two of them plumbed together. Check the capacity moulded into the tank before you order. If you have two 2,500 litre tanks and both are empty, a 5,000 litre delivery fills both in one trip.

Then work out how long it needs to last

As a planning figure, a household of four using water carefully — drinking, cooking, washing and sanitation, with the garden left alone — moves through roughly 400 to 600 litres a day. Unrestricted use with laundry, long showers and a hosepipe runs well above that.

On those numbers, 2,500 litres covers a careful household of four for about four to five days, and 5,000 litres for about eight to ten. Treat both as estimates for your own household rather than promises, because real consumption varies enormously between properties.

The practical implication: if the interruption looks like it will last more than a few days, the smaller load will have you ordering again inside the week.

The cost per litre is not close

At US$30 for 2,500 litres you are paying US$12 per thousand litres. At US$50 for 5,000 litres you are paying US$10 per thousand. The larger load is about 17 per cent cheaper per litre.

Put differently: two 2,500 litre deliveries cost US$60 and deliver the same water as one 5,000 litre delivery at US$50. You also have to be available twice, open the gate twice, and wait twice.

When 2,500 litres is the right call

• Your storage is a 2,500 litre tank and cannot hold more.
• The tank is low rather than empty and you only need to bring it back up.
• You are topping up a swimming pool after evaporation rather than filling it.
• It is a cottage, flat or smaller property with modest demand.
• You know the municipal supply is returning within a day or two.

When 5,000 litres is the right call

• You are filling an empty 5,000 litre tank, or two 2,500 litre tanks.
• The household is large, or occupancy is above what the property was designed for.
• It is a business, and running dry means closing.
• It is a construction site, where 5,000 litres is a working unit rather than a week of supply.
• You are in an outer suburb where it makes more sense to fill properly than order twice.
• The supply problem is a borehole in decline rather than a short interruption.

What about more than 5,000 litres?

Plenty of jobs need it — a pool being refilled after repainting, a site pouring a slab, a complex recovering from a long outage. Those are quoted as a whole job rather than priced from a list, because volume, access and timing all move the answer.

Tell us the total volume and the address, and we will price the whole thing before anything is dispatched.

Related pages

• 2,500L water delivery — US$30
• 5,000L water delivery — US$50
• Residential water delivery