Leak Detection in Irrigation System

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Norm

September 10, 2016 13:52

After having had three bad breaks in main supply lines and hundreds of dollars of added water bills each time ($600 for the last one), I'm searching for an alarm system for major breaks. One solution I've seen is the Flo Logic smart valve, but the valve alone is over $1600.

A seemingly logical extension to Rainmachine functionality would be to include an option for an automatic shutoff valve that is actuated in the event of more than say 2500 gallons on any given day (programmable to suit each irrigation system). When exceeded, the water could be shut off and an alarm issued to the owner's phone. Such a function would safeguard against broken lines and stuck zone valves. 

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  Riguy September 10, 2016 13:53

  There are a number of flow sensor available. Toro, hunter, and cst have them. Rain machine could be updated to pull the data from these sensors and detect a leak

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  Chris September 10, 2016 13:55

  Using a master value would limit the amount of water loss:

  a) if the break is downstream of the master value

  b) a valve gets stuck open

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  Kurt September 10, 2016 13:57

  The rain machine has no way to detect how much water is flowing.

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  Ben Manfield March 13, 2017 02:07

  Add a flow sensor and configure it on one of the zones.

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  JustinHeber May 08, 2019 15:25

  Leak detection flow sensors can detect how much water is flowing.

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  kujulu July 30, 2019 11:20

  I had a sprinkler head pop off overnight and lost about 300 gallons.

  I did have a flow sensor attached to my Pro-16. Looking at my watering history is how I realized I had a bad leak.

  Has the RainMachine still not gotten leak detection? Seems it should at least save a history of water usage and immediately shut off a zone that is using say >10% the typical flow.

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  Karl Dums August 18, 2019 09:53

  I also wish to have this function due to a broken hose connection and loss of lots of water. Leak detection only when the zones are off is not enough and does not recognise such a failure - which is probably more likely than a valve stucks open. My proposal in addition to the existing leak detection:

  The RainMachine  "learns" the amount of normal water consumption of every zone and shuts off the main valve / zone valve if an exeeded water flow above a programmable treshold is detected.

  or as an alternative:

  The water consumption of every zone is progrrammable and the main valve / zone valve is closed if an exeeded water flow above a programmable treshold is detected.

  superfeature:

  The threshold reduces automatically, when the value of the water consumption of a zone is stable - which should happen, when the flow of a zone is measured more often.

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  Seth September 17, 2019 16:44

  Ideally there would be a "normal" flow value for each zone (either manually set or auto average over X days) and if flow becomes too high or too low it flags an error and/or sends an alert. Too low would be good for alerting for valves failing to open.

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  BB October 09, 2019 16:13

  While we wait for enhanced leak detection features, you can utilize the RainMachine API to create the reports and alerts you are looking for in a free cloud reporting service.

  See this thread for examples:

  https://support.rainmachine.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360034753394-Should-I-buy-a-flow-sensor-to-my-RainMachine-Pro-8-

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