As in what is the minimum it can register? I’ve looked and found flow rates vs accuracy but the flow rate doesn’t go to zero. Say for example you have a dripping faucet that drips a cup a day. [Edit] Can that be measured by a typical residential water meter?
I have a Moen “Flo” device that’s designed to pick up leaks, large and small. A few times a day it does a test that will pick up a drip leak. It doesn’t pick it up from flow rate, but by closing its valve and checking for any downstream pressure drop.
The meters typically have a minimum flow rate - a 5/8" meter like is typical for most houses might have a 0.25 gpm minimum flow rate that they can measure. That’s a quart per minute.
Recordall | Disc Series Meters | Badger Meter (get the product data sheet for the 5/8" meter)
As long as it’s above that rate, it will be measured. Meters can be read in three ways- manually (i.e. someone literally eyeballs the meter), AMR (utility people drive a truck around with data gathering equipment that polls the meter), and AMI (meter is connected full-time to some sort of wireless network, and can be read on-demand.
AMI meters can be used to detect leaks that are within the meter’s capabilities by simply reading the meter multiple times a day and identifying that there’s a constant low flow going on somewhere.
Do you mean to say there are residential water meters that wouldn’t detect a 360 gallon per day leak?
If I’m reading that data sheet right, most wouldn’t register a 720 gallon per day leak, if it was slow enough.
Here’s a Quora response about basically the same thing. In essence, most meters require a certain amount of flow to actually turn the discs/gears/whatever, so flows smaller than that aren’t registered.
Can the water meter detect when I turn on a tap that drips once every 2 seconds? - Quora
Here’s a Science Direct study on water meters and small leak detection. They basically come to the conclusion that current meters aren’t accurate/sensitive enough, and the onboard electronics are limited.
Sensitivity of water meters to small leakage - ScienceDirect
Thanks for the links bump. I guess the gist of my question was, how much free water can you get if the flow rate is low enough? My shower faucet handle broke and I replaced it with needle nose vise grips. This can spin 360 degrees in either direction. In one particular position it is off (indicated by a Sharpie mark). Getting it exactly in the correct position is a crap shoot. I place a pitcher under the faucet to catch the dripping and fill old milk jugs. I then use that water to wash dishes and refill the toilet tank after flushing. It hasn’t been consistent, but one month my water usage was 25% less than it’s ever been.
I’ll see if I can ask around at work; I work in IT, but I deal with the water meter people frequently enough.
I know that within the limitations of the meters themselves, they can identify properties with leaks through some moderately sophisticated analysis on changes over time on AMI meters, because they can get data from them much more frequently than AMR or manually read meters.