Reading the irrigation water meter
 

Is there any way for a human being to read the irrigation water meter that is buried underground under the green cover? I opened the green cover and all I see is lots of dirt, pipes and wires. I don't see any numbers that a person can read. It would be useful to be able to measure your water usage for each irrigation zone over the course of a day rather than having to wait for the aggregated monthly bill to arrive.

You probably need to carefully dig out some of the dirt to get to the face of the meter. Be careful, there may be some animals in there, I have seen frogs, and snakes.

The plastic cover and pipes should be purple, not green. The green one is the electric power.

You might have to shine a light on it. That could activate the dial so you can read it.

1. What village do you live in?
North of 466, homes have one water meter. The water is for both human consumption and irrigation. South of 466, homes have two meters - one for potable and another for irrigation. The covers for these meters are nearer the street.

2. There might be a cover nearer the house that contains the valves and pipes - one for each zone. Mine does not have a meter. I don't think any of them do because the meter is near the street.

3. There is no way to "to measure your water usage for each irrigation zone."

3. If you are south of 466, what you would do is read the meter nearer the street which is for your irrigation system.

You could measure the water usage for each irrigation zone by turning off all zones but one and check the meter for each zone one day at a time.

Your monthly bill will not show cost/use by zone but rather the total cost of water used to irrigate. It’s fairly nominal if you follow the rules of watering twice a week. If you water for hours at a time, it will cost more but considering the amount of rain we normally get during the summer, you may not even need to water.

Yes there is way to measure water, catch it in bucket for minute and take that times there number of heads you got on the line. Plus, the sprinkler head have flow rate on them in most cases. IMO most have each zone times running too long. If you see water running down the street for 15 mins you are wasting water, cut the zone time down. Now you can adjust the heads also so the don’t spray on driveway or street wasting water. I understand for those have grass yards, but if water running down the street to storm drain like river you wasting water ( cause it’s just running off rather than soaking in) and you’re wasting money even those it recycled you are paying twice for it.

Not at our house..Green is water..:MOJE_whot:

I thought there was a calculation based on how many gallons per minute you system outputs

I'm curious, if you had the water usage by zone on a daily basis, how much of an advantage would that information be for you?

If you have had an unusually high water bill, you may have a leak somewhere in the underground pipes. Also if you are North of 466, and have an unusually high water bill, you may have a toilet running and need to replace the gasket or something. Village tinker will know. My husband knows too but he is asleep.

At a recommendation from this forum, I purchased and installed a “FLUME” water meter. It is magnetically activated by your water meter (it very easily straps to the outside of your existing water meter - 2 minute installation). This device connects to my WiFi and gives me lots of detailed information on my irrigation water usage.

I can get flows in gallons per minute (so I can figure out the flow per zone), overall water use per day and others. It will let you know if there is a leak in your system.

If you have a water meter, this can help you. Research it to be sure it will work with your water meter.

PS - I have attached a photo of our meter with the FLUME sensor. Our water meter is pink and has a cover over the face that needs to be flipped up to read the numbers. Our home is about 3years old, so the irrigation water was probably installed 4 years ago.

Hope this helps you!

The only way to measure each zone is to place containers throughout that zone (or all zones if you have many containers) when your irrigation runs or do one zone at a time by manually running a zone you want to test;this will allow you to see amount of water being dispersed throughout that zone. You can then adjust zone times to amount of water recommended weekly for type of grass you have;I do this all the time to make adjustments after replacing a sprinkler or adding a new sprinkler to a zone.

Well it's read monthly so if its
all covered with and what you say,that can't be what the reader looks at every month