I’m not really even thinking there is a “my way and your way”… just that enough variables/inputs need to be available for different scenarios.
I must admit I was making an evidently poor assumption that everyone had a flow meter provided by the city as a means for billing their customers. I should know better because of course there are going to be people in places where water isn’t metered, places where meters are older models that don’t display a flow readout, and certainly places that have meters inaccessible for convenient or even possible reading. I guess I’m lucky, now that I think about it, because I just have to open my utility closet and look at the LCD readout and it tells me how many L/min are flowing (I’ve been trying to hack it so I can have a read-out on my mobile without having to go to the closet). So long as I can keep my kid from an untimely flush of the toilet, I can determine fairly precisely how much each zone uses.
I imagine if I didn’t have this city-provided meter that I’d be looking into installing one on my own, because it has been so helpful with not only irrigation needs but also determining if a toilet is leaky or what not.
Anyway. We agree: ability to make a meaningful correlation between rain and irrigation is necessary. However that is achieved 🙂