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Water Use

California is in a drought right now and water is expensive, so monitoring water use seems like a good idea. Over the last (mumble) years we have had pipes break a couple times and major amounts of water were expended, which is quite expensive and irresponsible ... another reason to monitor continuously.

See also solar generation

Monthly water use:

100 cu ft US Estimated
date units gallons month units
2023-04-25 1.68 1265 2.02
2023-03-31 2.49 1870 2.49
2023-02-28 2.30 1725 2.30
2023-01-31 2.58 1936 2.58
2022-12-31 2.20 1651 2.20
2022-11-30 3.13 2354 3.13
2022-10-31 9.23 6937 9.23
2022-09-30 21.86 16432 21.86
2022-08-31 16.93 12725 16.93

Daily water use:

US
date gallons
2023-04-25 Tue 18
2023-04-24 Mon 40
2023-04-23 Sun 79
2023-04-22 Sat 42
2023-04-21 Fri 74
2023-04-20 Thu 42
2023-04-19 Wed 53
2023-04-18 Tue 45
2023-04-17 Mon 42

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Water use is automated using EKM Metering devices: water meter, pulse counter, and serial-to-ethernet converter. The simple software 'glue' I wrote to make the water data visible (coded in C and Python and using xml) is Linux/Unix centric and will require extra effort to use it on some other OS. See ekmexample-2014-10-19.tar.gz , a 15KByte gzip tar file containing the source code.

Rainfall is monitored with a simple plastic collector ($2USD at a local hardware store) graduated in inches. Recorded & emptied each morning.

2021-2022 winter season rainfall at home: 18 October to June 5: 34.9

2020-2021 winter season rainfall at home: 18 November to 19 March: 12.8

2019-2020 winter season rainfall at home: 29 November to 30 June: 64.8

2018-2019 winter season rainfall at home: 21 November to 20 May: 41.6

2017-2018 winter season rainfall at home: 11 November to 24 June: 23.1

2016-2017 winter season rainfall at home: 14 October to 16 April: 56.5 inches.

2015-2016 winter season rainfall at home: 9 November through April22: 34.8 inches.

2014-2015 winter season rainfall at home, 20 November to 24 April: 25.8 inches.

June 21-29, 2015 we had a 25-year-old plastic water pipe break underground. Estimate of leak: 4K gallons. Should have noticed before the 29th, but we were too busy. July 1 I implemented an automatic email to ourselves in case water use exceeds expectations.

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