There are 5 in this family and between washing clothes, dishes, showers, cleaning, water the lawn, and whatever else, I'm sure all this activity doesn't help.
I'm staying with a good friend of mine (another family of five) for the weekend who has five acres and a 100+ ft well with a 240VAC pump. I was just discussing this very same topic with him Friday evening since this is where I have all (1.3KW) of my PV panels stored and it seems a waste to just let them sit doing nothing.
It came out in the discussion that the well pump is of negligable impact on his power bill, as his cost drops in the summer even though that is when the vast majority of the (lawn/garden watering, swimming pool, sprinkler playing) consumption occurs (VERY wet winters here). I'm not even factoring in the day-to-day usage like baths and such, since those occur year round on a regular basis.
If you REALLY want to cut your costs relating to water usage, then my first instinct would be to investigate a solar hot water setup. Cleaning clothes, dishes, surfaces and people ALL use hot water when done right, and I'm willing to lay dollars to donuts THAT'S where the vast majority of your power usage goes. (I'm assuming of course an electric water heater).
You don't even have to make it totally stand alone.It doesn't have to be anything special. Every degree of increase in water temp that's fed to the heater means that much less energy used to get it 'up to temp'. I know of one fellow whos potable water storage is INSIDE his living space, so the heater needs only raise the temp from about 70 degrees instead of 40 degree groundwater. He runs his gas water heater on just the pilot light with a small aluminum pie-tin over the exhaust stack to slow heat loss,and he has all the hot water he needs. Admitedly he's single, not a family of five, but I think you get the point I'm trying to make.
