Installing 24hr Camera on Master Water Meter

Park I’m in contract on has recurring water leaks. Master meter is manually read by the town once a month and involves someone climbing down ladder into manhole pit. Has anyone ever thought of putting a camera to have real time feed of meter to monitor leaks? Would of course need electricity and internet so not sure how much would be involved but would really help stay on top of leaks. Imagine town wouldn’t mind if it would save them having to crawl down hole each month.

Many people use meters / submeters with radio frequency capabilities that you can read in real time over the Internet - they can connect to WiFi or a cell tower to a server collecting the data - just depends on the setup.

I suspect you could run reports regularly to see if daily consumption is out of band and call a plumber to check for leaks if it persists for more than a day or two.

There are a few threads on folks that provide this as a service - for one meter I doubt it would be terribly expensive, but to do this with submeters at all homes probably would be a bit prohibitive unless you’re losing a lot of money to leaks monthly.

If one meter is the issue, we could def help you out with a resolution.

However if your entire park is suffering from recurring water leaks sub metering with out a doubt it the most equitable route to take.
The Spectrum 30d meter for example, has a smart register that could give you real time data reads. Every 30 seconds it sends a heartbeat to receiving station, and then that information is then stored on the cloud or server and is available to you daily .

http://abtwater.com/

Thanks. I’m familiar with those submeters. The park is actually already submetered, which works well. Tenants pay for water and usage is more or less where it should be. Problem is with recurring monthly leaks elsewhere (ie master meter 2x passthrough charges to tenants). Finding a way to actively monitor master meter (vs once a month reading) would allow me to spot leaks immediately and not have to wait until end of month.

Thanks very much. Do you work with municipalities often? Any reason they might have an issue with me installing one of these?

Yes we actually have dealt with and even installed radios for municipalities in the past.

First step I do suggest, is speaking with the municipality first to see if they mind the meter being tampered with.

In most cases similar to this that we’ve seen, they are usually all for grabbing the data online instead of crawling down a pit.

In other cases the municipality doesn’t want anyone to touch their meters or alter how their read.
Again each municipality is different so i’d contact the city.

Speak to them and pitch the idea of having a radio installed

If they looking to get more technical questions answered we’d be more than happy to step in and answer any questions thrown our way.

Gabriel@abtwater.com

1800.697.9096 EXT 13

Here is a possible low tech approach:

  1. Have your maintenance guy manually read the master meter every few days - We do that at one of our parks

  2. Install a game trail/ time lapse type camera and take pictures of the register. You set the camera at whatever time interval you want. Cost approx $150.

Thanks everyone. Will be in touch Gabriel.