Water figures that look wrong

Before assuming a leak or a faulty meter, check the pulse ratio. Get it wrong and every figure since installation is out by a factor of ten, with nothing about the installation looking wrong.

The two common values are 10 and 100 pulses per kilolitre, which is 100 or 10 litres per pulse. So:

• Configured as 100 when the meter is physically 10: each real pulse is worth 100 litres but counted as 10. The platform under-reports by ten times.
• Configured as 10 when the meter is physically 100: each real pulse is worth 10 litres but counted as 100. The platform over-reports by ten times.

The usual causes, in order of likelihood

1. The wrong pulse ratio. Each channel is configured with a pulses-per-kilolitre value. The common values are 10 and 100. If the value supplied at installation did not match the meter physically fitted, every figure since is out by a factor of ten. Have someone read the rating printed on each water meter and send it to support.

2. A large "Not Measured" figure. Not Measured is not a meter. It is the parent reading minus the sum of its measured children. If a sub-meter is fed off a parent that also serves other things, the remainder shows up here and can be large and perfectly correct. Ask what the parent physically serves before treating it as an error.

3. A spike. One meter jumping by orders of magnitude while its neighbours look normal is a spike, not a leak. See A reading looks impossibly high.

4. A configuration fault. Large negative water readings are usually a setup problem on the point rather than hardware. Support escalates these and the setup is corrected. Ask explicitly whether historical data was affected or only the period since the fault started.

5. A genuine change. Sometimes consumption really did move. A halving or a doubling that persists, with an operational explanation, is not a metering problem.

Verifying a disputed reading

This is the only method that settles an argument, and it is worth doing properly:

1. Take a manual reading from the physical water meter and write down the exact time.
2. Wait a period. A working day or a full day is usually enough.
3. Take a second manual reading, again with the exact time.
4. Send both readings with their timestamps to support@augos.io.

Support compares the same window on the platform. Small over-reads on the platform side are expected when the manual reading was not taken exactly on the hour, so do not treat a few litres of difference as a fault.

What to do

1. Confirm the pulse rating printed on the meter.
2. Confirm what the meter physically serves.
3. If the figure is still not explainable, run the two-reading verification above.

Good to know

• Pulse ratios and channel assignments are support-side changes and take minutes. A faulty input can be moved to a spare pulse log channel without any site work.
• The Augos unit has a main meter with numbered channels plus a separate pulse log with its own numbered channels.
• Where hot water is derived by subtracting one meter from another, check whether a tank sits between them. If it does, the subtraction is invalid regardless of how healthy both meters are. See Virtual measurement points.

Still stuck

Email support@augos.io with the point path, the figure you dispute, the pulse rating printed on the physical meter, and two timestamped manual readings if you have them.