HOME | Software | Lotus Cars | DWARF | Kindle | Solar |
![]() |
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 |
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.