Solution for Water Flow Monitoring?

[cornutt]

That brings up another issue that may need to be given consideration. If you close a valve on the water line for an extended period of time, you may create a "closed system", meaning that there isn't anything that will handle an increase in water pressure downstream from the valve

Good point. I had not thought about it because we already have an expansion tank -- the city here requires all water services to have a pressure regulator, which acts like a check valve, so an expansion tank is a necessity.

 

[Ira]

That brings up another issue that may need to be given consideration. If you close a valve on the water line for an extended period of time, you may create a "closed system", meaning that there isn't anything that will handle an increase in water pressure downstream from the valve

Good point. I had not thought about it because we already have an expansion tank -- the city here requires all water services to have a pressure regulator, which acts like a check valve, so an expansion tank is a necessity.

I'm on my own private water well, so the 120 gallon pressure tank acts as an expansion tank, too. But, when I add the Elk water valve downstream from the pressure tank, I will also add an expansion tank downstream from the valve.

Watts has a pressure regulator with a "bypass feature" that will let water flow backwards thru it if the downstream pressure exceeds the upstream pressure. I stumbled across it a while back when I was looking at adding a regulator so I could increase the well pump pressure to help out my irrigation system while regulating my house water pressure. Both are fed by the same water well pump, so I planned on adding the regulator on the branch leading to the house. I was still gonna use an expansion tank as a backup in case the regulator messed up. Haven't done anything yet, but it's still on the list of things to do this Spring.

Ira

 

[Rupp]

When my house goes unoccupied I clear this virtual device and run a script each time the counter incriments...

Combining the water meter with the wetness sensors sounds like a good idea. It seems like triggering on two gallons in one minute or less may not be "sensitive" enough, unless the only thing that part of the system is supposed to detect is a full on water pipe break or the equivalent, and the wetness sensors are supposed to catch small leaks. Two gallons a minute is quite a bit of water. Doesn't a shower head put out about two gallons a minute at wide open?

Ira

The way I read this is this is the 2 gallons test is only used when the house is unoccupied.

 

[Ira]

When my house goes unoccupied I clear this virtual device and run a script each time the counter incriments...

Combining the water meter with the wetness sensors sounds like a good idea. It seems like triggering on two gallons in one minute or less may not be "sensitive" enough, unless the only thing that part of the system is supposed to detect is a full on water pipe break or the equivalent, and the wetness sensors are supposed to catch small leaks. Two gallons a minute is quite a bit of water. Doesn't a shower head put out about two gallons a minute at wide open?

Ira

The way I read this is this is the 2 gallons test is only used when the house is unoccupied.

That is what he said. The point I wanted to make was that you could have a pretty big leak without putting out two gallons a minute. So unless you are depending on the wetness sensors to catch all but really big leaks, you may want to extend the time frame a little, e.g., two gallons every three minutes. If his only water user in "away mode" is the ice maker, he could check for two gallon usage over a longer period of time (depending on how quickly the ice maker can go thru a cycle). I was using the shower head as an example of how much water you get at two gallons per minute.

Ira

 

[poolmandave33]

I want to put a residential water management solution in place with three components:

1. Water Detection (triggers when a "dry zone" gets wet)
2. Water Flow Monitoring (to help determine when there may be a leak, even if water is not detected in a dry zone)
3. Water Shutoff Mechanism (motorized valve triggered by control system)

I know WaterCop and other solutions offer 1. and 3. I'm looking for solutions that do the water flow monitoring and can integrate with third party systems. It's OK if the device also performs one or both of the other functions. Suggestions?

 
About a year ago I had the same goals for my business. I found a company called Kona Labs and started to use a couple of their products. I'll tell you what I did in order of your requirements above. 
 
1. I had to call them for this, but their LevelSmart device was originally designed to work under sinks and in other "dry zones" and then wirelessly transmits alerts to your cell phone. It looks like it's advertised for pools on their site now, but the function should be the same. You can see it here: https://konalabs.com/product/levelsmart/
 
2. They also have a flow meter they have designed to sense flow and view how much GPM your flow is. It's relatively cheap and works incredibly well. You can see it here: https://konalabs.com/product/flowvis-flow-meter/
 
3. While I did not purchase an automatic shutoff, the backbone of their system and the part that sends out the text alerts is called MeterDog - https://konalabs.com/meterdog/. It puts a tiny sensor on your water meter to measure the flow. I wanted this because it didn't require cutting any pipes, which I was skeptical of at first but I tested it relentlessly the first week and couldn't break it.
 
Hope this helps. 

 

[NeverDie]

It's worth mentioning that a lot of water softeners contain flow sensors because they need to keep track of when a recharge is needed.  So, if you already have water softener, then with some investigation you may be able to piggy-back.