calculatet Flow meter

[David]

Hi,

I think a little bit about the Flow meter. What is about to calculate the Flow from the running time.

At first, you need to calibrate your Flow per Time. For exampler over one day. Your Sprinkler run the Programs with 100% for 1 day. You messure the Flow and know what the sprinkler need at one day with 100%. Perfect. Set this value in the Sprinkler program.

If the sprinkler goes up to 120%… just calc 120% of the needed water. and so on… Now you can calc your water consumption over the Time or water level. Its not 100% accurate. But better than nothing 😉

[tom]

aaarghhh… I just wrote a lengthy reply to this message, pressed the “submit” button, and then it told me that I must be logged into post anything. It would have been nice to know that before they gave me an input screen with a Submit button. 🙁

@David, there can be huge differences between what the controller thinks it is doing and what actually happens. Broken pipes (before or after the control valve), broken sprinkler heads gushing water or not delivering, valves stuck open or closed, drip lines chewed through, and pumps/master valves/wells/water pressure problems. So there are dozens of points of failure that can have really bad consequences. (twice, I’ve come home from vacation to find a burst pipe. These cost me $800 and $1200 in water bills.) Accurate metering, describing exactly what happened, is really valuable.

It is also important to meter what is happening when the valves are NOT on. I want to put my meter upstream of all my valves, so I can see any leaks or strange behavior.

And, of course, I want to see me water flow (and alerts) in real time on my watch 🙂

[ottorino]

@Tom & David
I agree with you both.
The difference is the same between a measure and an estimation.
Both of them can be useful depending on the aim or the available equipment or money.

I also would like to have a flow meter since I had the very same problem which Tom had, but in the meanwhile I’m using the estimation method. But I did the estimation in a different way: I let each channel run for 5 minutes and record the amount of water on the analogical main flow meter of my house.

No need to say that all the other tap valves in the house were closed.

From time to time I repeat the procedure to check for flow consistency

[David]

@ottorino

thats the way i think about it.

If you have no flow meter: you can use a estimation/calculation method. To have an idea how much water u need for your garden.

If you have a flow meter: Its better. And it can help to find problems and so.

Both methods have thier advantages.

[Author]

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