Water Station: Cost Per 20 Litres, Honestly

A water station sells a product whose raw material is nearly free and whose real costs are almost entirely in the processing. That makes cost per unit easy to underestimate and easy to get wrong.

Count everything between the source and the sale

• Source water — mains, borehole or delivered, each with its own rate
• Treatment — filters, membranes, chemicals and UV lamps, all with replacement schedules
• Power — pumps and treatment run whenever you are producing
• Reject water — purification discards a share of what goes in, and you paid for that too
• Containers and seals — where you supply them
• Labour — filling, handling, loading
• Testing — periodic and non-negotiable

Reject water is the line most people miss

If treatment discards a meaningful share of input water, your cost per saleable litre is higher than your cost per litre purchased — by exactly that proportion. Establish the ratio for your own system rather than assuming.

Consumables fail on a schedule

Filters and membranes have a life measured in litres processed. Spreading their replacement cost across the litres they will actually produce turns an occasional painful purchase into a predictable per-litre cost.

Running consumables past their life to save money reduces quality, which is the one thing this business cannot afford to lose.

Distribution has its own economics

Delivering to homes and businesses adds transport, time and container handling. That is a different cost per jerrican from a walk-in refill and usually deserves a different price.

Quality is the business

Testing, cleaning and container hygiene are costs that produce no visible output — until a quality failure ends the station's reputation in a neighbourhood. Budget them as production costs, not as overheads to trim.

The figure to hold

Litres produced, litres sold and total monthly cost. Cost per saleable 20 litres, tracked monthly, tells you whether the price works — and it moves whenever power or a consumable does.