Detecting water leaks in sprinkler systems...

[bkengland]

Hello all:
Two things:
- Your group is getting spammed (HAI FRIENDS) through Satish; other
groups are getting hit as well, and I've notified Gary about this.
- At GreenFair, my sister and I asked the county water district folks
about how to detect slow water leaks in sprinkler systems. The problem
is, when you turn the sprinklers off, the meter doesn't register (if
everything else is off as well), and when the sprinklers are on, the
meter starts to register. In other words, there's no obvious way to
separate leakage from normal sprinkler operation. It occurred to me
that there might be a way, similar to checking compression in a car,
to "cap" sprinkler heads with devices that measure that pressure for
each head or subsystem. When one registers low compared with the
others, it might mean you have a leak in that line. The district folks
at the event were unaware of such a device, and they had no solution
to offer. Have you discussed this issue in your WG?
Bye for now!
Bruce E

[Marn-Yee Lee]

According to our friends at the Muni Ops Center, all MV meters have a built in leak detector.  It is the little triangle on the meter face, which moves at a much more granular level than the numerical hands.  It is blue on some meters.

--
Marn-Yee Lee
beingsustainable.blogspot.com
busythinking.blogspot.com.

[bkengland]

Right, that is correct, Marn Yee. However, when the sprinkers are shut
off (valves are ahead of potential sprinkler line leaks), the triangle
dial won't spin in response to leaks in the line. Then, when you turn
the sprinklers on, the triangle dial will spin a lot, and you still
won't know if you have any leaks or not. See what I mean?
Bye for now!
Bruce