Water meter advice

Anyone have suggestions on a water meter. The pipes feeding these large tanks is 6". I have looked online at acoustic meters but the ones so far don't work for city water. Normal flow meters can get expensive. we need 36. 18 for the hot water and another 18 for the cold. A paddle type meter could possibly be used but it would mean cutting into each pipe. I will also need to read it back into the Plc with either a pulse type input or possible total flow.

I have a customer who uses several Onicon F-1211 insertion flow meters. He has never had a problem with any of them. They use a "saddle" to tap into pipes up to 12" diam.

Try Signet

Dan Bentler

Be a bit careful with Signet - a customer of mine installed one on a system recently - a pulse output type. Had to also use a resistor to get the pulse. The PLC did not 'see' the pulses - used a Fluke meter with maximum/minimum to measure the pulse and it ranged from 4.4 volts to 8.7 volts - useless into the PLC - 24VDC input card. Additionally the distributor claimed we blew the first one up - $1500 a throw!!! Connected the second one up the same way and it did not blow up. The pulse rate was about 47 odd pulses a second - a bit fast for a standard PLC input card probably.

Finished up using a simple water meter with a reed switch output - worked like a charm. Had to cut the pipe though.

If you don't want to cut into the pipe then you need an insertion meter. These are available in padle wheel type, ultrasonic, and magnetic (mag meters). In general the cheapest is paddle wheel, the most accurate is the mag meter. I haven't had good luck with ultrasonic, but others think they are great. There are strap on version of the ultrasonics that even eliminate drilling a hole, but try before you buy.

I have used a few saddle dynasonics. They haven't given me any trouble.
I am getting ready to try a time of flight ultrasonic flowmeter on a job soon.

Thanks for all of the feedback. I got in contact with omicon today and awaiting a quote. I will most certainly check out the other suggestions.