How water metering works, and what a new installation needs

Augos does not measure water directly. Your water meter counts the water; an Augos pulse unit counts the pulses your water meter emits and sends them on. So a water meter with a pulse output is the one thing an installation cannot do without.

What you need

• A water meter with a pulse output. This is the method of collecting the data. A meter without one cannot be read.
• One meter per supply line you want to see. Each outlet needs a meter on its main supply line.
• Sensible mounting. Preferably horizontal, and a fair distance from a bend in the line. Bends disturb the flow and the meter reads less accurately.
• The pulse unit mounted clear of water. Above or below the water meter, as high as practical, and clear of standing water. Water ingress is one of only two common failure modes for these units.
• Landlord permission if the premises are not on a municipal supply.

Hot water is treated the same way as cold.

You may use your own preferred plumber for the installation. Tell Augos who is doing it so the commissioning can be coordinated.

How it appears on the platform

Water points appear alongside electricity in the same hierarchy, with the same pages and reports. A water point behaves like any other measurement point: it can sit under a parent, it can have a Not Measured sibling, and it can be included in the cost breakdown.

Commissioning

Each channel is configured with a pulses-per-kilolitre ratio. The two common values are 10 and 100 pulses per kilolitre, in other words 100 or 10 litres per pulse. Getting this wrong is the most common cause of implausible water figures, and it is much easier to get right at installation than to unpick later.

Have someone physically read the pulse rating printed on each water meter and send it to Augos. Augos also asks for two timestamped manual readings so the configured ratio can be confirmed against real consumption.

Good to know

• The pulse unit being online does not mean water is being counted. Those are two separate things. See Water showing zero or no readings.
• The battery in a pulse transmitter lasts around four years. Battery end of life and water damage are the two failure modes worth planning for.
• Where a tank or reservoir sits between two meters, you cannot derive the consumption between them by subtraction. See Virtual measurement points.

Still stuck

Email support@augos.io with the site, which supply lines you want measured, and photographs of the existing water meters showing the make and the pulse rating.