Our Water Usage

Water Logged

Site Menu

Water Usage
-

We're on a well, and never had a water meter installed. After replacing the well pump after about 10 years, I yearned for determing how much water we were using. Also, the fuse regularly blows on the Linux based sprinkler system, and I don't know that I'm not watering the lawn until stuff starts turning brown...
I found a nice meter (DLJSJ75C) that closes a read contact switch for every gallon of water used. Coupled with a few items for a one wire system from Hobby Boards, some software, and the ancient cast off computer from my Dad that runs Ubuntu and the sprinkler system, a water usage monitor setup was born.
Once a minute, a simple Perl script opens the file exported by OWFS, and if the counts have changed since the last time, an entry is logged into a PostgreSQL database which tracks the gallons used that minute, and the current total usage. The daily consumption graph is updated daily, and the detailed usage graph once an hour.
The sprinkler system will be calibrated for each zone to know how much water is used per minute. When a sprinkler is in use, the start and end water usage will be recorded, and then compared against the calibrated usage. This should allow for determing when a fuse or solenoid has blown, or if an something else has gone wonky, causing too much or too little water usage. The sprinkler system already uses the evotrapsparation provided by the weather station to calculate when and how much to water each zone.