How much money are you losing through your OVERSIZED water meters ?

Although residential customers may be paying for every drop of water that goes though their small meter, some industrial and commercial customers with larger size meters might not necessarily be paying for all the water they are using. Conversely small meters in high flow applications may ware out prematurely with consequential replacement costs and inconvienence.

All water meters have a Qmin and Qmax ratings, which means they have a minimum flow rate they can detect with 100% accurately and a maximum flow rate that they can handle without premature failure. Therefore it is important to make sure that the meter installed has actual flow rates operating between its Qmin & Qmax limits. The best way of determining the actual flow rates through the meter is to use a data logger.
Meter Sizing

Databands1
Computer screen shot on left was obtained from Radlog for Windows software (with optional Meter Sizing module activated) and shows a typical application, where up to 20 "User Defined" flow rate bands can be plotted against volume and percentage. The data can be displayed graphically, or in a tabular format.

This particular data display format is very useful to verify the sizing of water meters. With a correctly sized water meter all the flow should be between the Qmin and Qmax as with the example shown.

Hardware needed for sizing water meters:
- Water meter senors (eg Magnetic Sensor - MS200 in above photo)
- Datalogger - LoLog, MultiLog, Sentry, Centurion etc

The 2 pictures below show an example from an Meter Sizing Study undertaken in a City within Massachusetts:-

Turbine Meter1
Original Oversized 6" Turbine Meter

DisplacementMeter1
Replacement 1½" Displacement Meter

The above data (shown in blue) was obtained from a 7 day data logging session monitoring an oversized 6" Turbine Meter which had a Qmin of 30 Gallons/Min and a Qmax of 2000 Gallons/Min. The total volume of water that flowed through the meter during the 7 day logging trial was 18,324 Gallons, with 90.5% of the flow below the Qmin.

The above data (shown in red) was obtained from a 7 day data logging session using a 1½" Displacement Meter that replaced the original 6" Turbine meter. The new meter has a Qmin of 1½ Gallons/Min and a Qmax of 100 Gallons/Min. The volume over the 7 days was 156,128 Gallons (over 800% increase in revenue), with 99.9% of the flow between Qmin and Qmax.