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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 |
| 2025-03-01 | 0.10 | 77 | 3.16 |
| 2025-02-28 | 3.00 | 2256 | 3.00 |
| 2025-01-31 | 9.20 | 6916 | 9.20 |
| 2024-12-31 | 8.12 | 6100 | 8.12 |
| 2024-11-30 | 15.05 | 11312 | 15.05 |
| 2024-10-31 | 20.43 | 15356 | 20.43 |
| 2024-09-30 | 22.16 | 16656 | 22.16 |
| 2024-08-31 | 21.10 | 15858 | 21.10 |
| 2024-07-31 | 22.24 | 16719 | 22.24 |
Daily water use:
| US | ||
|---|---|---|
| date | gallons | |
| 2025-03-01 | Sat | 74 |
| 2025-02-28 | Fri | 92 |
| 2025-02-27 | Thu | 55 |
| 2025-02-26 | Wed | 66 |
| 2025-02-25 | Tue | 48 |
| 2025-02-24 | Mon | 48 |
| 2025-02-23 | Sun | 42 |
| 2025-02-22 | Sat | 71 |
| 2025-02-21 | Fri | 79 |
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.