Shut off master water at night schedule system?

[miogpsrocks]

Hello.

I have a commercial building including 5 restaurants and I got a new smart meter installed recently with tons of graphs and metrics about water usage.

Many nights from 12AM to 9AM I see nonstop water usage of like 4.1 Gallons per minute.

I think maybe someone is leaving the water on all night and turning it off in the morning.

I was considering(if it exist) installing some kind of device that will turn the water off from like 12AM to 6AM at night in stop this kind of thing from happening.

What do you guys think?

Thanks.

 

[Matt30]

Do you have any water treatment that may be going thru regeneration at that time?

Many times, I wire a solenoid valve to a switch by the front door. As you walk out, hit the switch, solenoid activates and water is off.

 

[miogpsrocks]

Do you have any water treatment that may be going thru regeneration at that time?

Many times, I wire a solenoid valve to a switch by the front door. As you walk out, hit the switch, solenoid activates and water is off.

Can you recommend a product that would do this?

Do you know if there is something that would work off wifi that does this that you could either control with a smart phone or website?

Something like this might help.

Thanks.

 

[frodo]

if someone is useing water illegally,

turn the water off and watch to see who comes to find out why

in my opinion, a straight forward water key and a pad lock will cost a whole lot less than installing an electronic valve
running power to it, and asphault patch when done


do detective work fined out what water is being used by who

 

[pasadena_commut]

Hello.

I have a commercial building including 5 restaurants and I got a new smart meter installed recently with tons of graphs and metrics about water usage.

...

I was considering(if it exist) installing some kind of device that will turn the water off from like 12AM to 6AM at night in stop this kind of thing from happening.

Does the meter actually reliably read zero flow? Is it quantized above that? For all you know the low level it says is being used is the least it can show. (That is, it could jump to 4 gph on a change from nothing to a trickle.) This sort of quantization can happen when the measuring device uses a DAQ with too few bits.

Are there not fire sprinkler systems in this building? Are they on this same feed? Do you see the problem with shutting off the water if they are?

Restaurants usually have ice machines. If they have a busy night and deplete the ice those may run for a long time making more, certainly well into the night. However, that wouldn't take 4gpm continuously unless industrial ice machines have changed a lot since I last saw one. The restaurant owners may be unhappy if the machines cannot make ice at night.

Are any of the restaurants Chinese? It is common for wok cooking to have a small faucet running in the cooking area, steady flow. Here's a reference:

http://www.allianceforwaterefficiency.org/1Column.aspx?id=700