Hedda
commented
2 years ago Water or fluids are most likely very similar to gas, as they are measured in m³/ ft³. It needs a decision if every fluid should be implemented individually or similar like gas in a more generic way covering all gas types.
I believe there are at least 9 existing integrations that could show running water flow measured in litres or gallons per minute.
Note however that water meter monitoring systems for main incoming drinking water doesn't only measure water usage (m³or ft³) and water flow (l/m or g/m), but also water temperature and pressure in your water pipes/plumbing. That is because water monitoring is not always only monitoring consumption with water as a consumable, users will also want a few more other sensors used to detect leaks and/or environment changes like freezing temperatures risking bursts pipes.
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Flow-rate sensor is not only used for monitoring consumption and calculating your current running water bill. Flow rate can also be used to detect abnormal high flow rates (e.g. a sprinkler head broke off and water is pouring out into the street) and thus either send a notification and/or automatically close shutoff-valve if got a water shutoff valve actuator. Another scenario is to automatically shut off the water valve if detect water is flowing when everyone is asleep or when no one is home. Alternatively, just get notified or automatically shut off the valve if the water has been continuously running for X number of minutes.
- J-Pipe got a proof-of-concept based on ESPHome here -> https://github.com/J-Pipe/Whole-House-Water-Monitoring
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Pressure sensor monitoring inside the pipes is used in "Smart" Water Leak Detector Products and Water Usage Monitoring System use the combination of flow (usually measured in litre for drinking water) and the pressures inside your actual water pipes (normally measured in bar, kPa, or psi) to automatically detect small leaks (even micro-leaks like slow drips) by temporarily closing a shutoff-valve once per day during off-peak hours for a few minutes and during that time measuring flow in millilitre per minute as well as the drop in pressure to determine if any leak exists, (based on statistics analytics difference in your house plumbing system).
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Temperature sensor monitoring inside the pipes is used both to warn for risk of freezing (to know when to turn on freeze guards), or risk of incoming cold water getting too warm. This is especially important to monitor for tap-water used for drinking and showers sitting stagnant in pipes or tanks for too long between 20-59° Celsius / 68-138° Fahrenheit can be a seriously dangerous health risk as if contaminated with Legionella pathogen that bacteria will then multiply and very commonly cause extremely contagious stomach flu diseases.
Some of these example water monitoring products do feature integrations which monitor; flow, temperature, and pressure sensors:
- P1 Monitor integration can read data from your smart meter via P1 serial port, inc. water consumption as well as other sensors
- SML sensor (for ESPHome) reading data from commercial smart meters (including unity companies water meters)
- Flo by Moen - Smart Home Water Security System
- Flume 2 - Smart Home Water Monitor
- StreamLabs (StreamLabs Monitor and StreamLabs Control) - Water Leak Detection and Control Systems
- GROHE Sense Guard - Smart Water Controller (and the same API is also to interface with "GROHE Ondus" series of products)
- https://www.grohe.us/Smarthome/sense-guard
- https://github.com/gkreitz/homeassistant-grohe_sense (Grohe Sense integration custom component from HACS)
- Phyn - Water Leak Detector and Water Usage Monitoring System made by Uponor and Belkin
- https://www.phyn.com
- IFTTT Webhooks/Cloudhooks -> https://www.vcloudinfo.com/2020/05/phyn-plus-smart-water-shutoff-device.html
- Suez Water on the other hand is only a sensor platform that fetches your last day consumption from utility provider website.
- FloLogic (Automatic Water Shutoff Valve / Leak Detection System)
- Buoy Water Controller (also sold as Honeywell BSV-101-WC10-LF/U), originally by Buoy Labs and later aquired Resideo
- DIY Inductive Zigbee water meter (for either ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT to MQTT)
Anyway, see these related feature requests with discussion threads in the forum here which shows there is a real demand for this:
Other references from governments that indicate that active water usage monitoring will become more important in the future:
- https://www.epa.gov/watersense/fix-leak-week
- https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-water-saving-measures-to-safeguard-supplies
- https://deframedia.blog.gov.uk/2020/07/10/how-we-are-working-to-safeguard-our-water-supplies/
- https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmselect/cmpubacc/378/37806.htm
- https://discoverwater.co.uk/leaking-pipes
- https://citywaterconservation.com
jensihnow
PimDoos
epenet
Context
With Energy management being a huge success and gas consumption already available a missing puzzle piece is water.
Proposal
Make water available as device class and therefore usable within sensors.
Maybe instead of implementing water it is an option to implement fluid as this would cover others like oil as well. Interestingly, with multiple sorts of carbon / nitrogen available maybe it should be rather fluid_water and fluid_oil.
Water or fluids should be supported similarly as Gas in regard to Energy Management, e.g. on Frontend (Water consumptuon graph) see Lovelace Energy.
Consequences
Water or fluids are most likely very similar to gas, as they are measured in m³/ ft³. It needs a decision if every fluid should be implemented individually or similar like gas in a more generic way covering all gas types.
As one m³ reflects 1,000 liters there could be use-cases where people would rather user liters instead of m³. One could argue having liters is another way of implementing fluids. Obviously this might cause complexity about m³ vs. ft³. I'm actually not sure if ft³ are stored in m³ or ft³ (... Volume of gas, statistics will be stored in m³. ..., see sensor).
The alternative
Using device class gas is an alternative as it is also measured in m³. While it works, it is technically not correct.
Additional note