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[bkenobi]

I know there are about 5,000 threads just on this forum talking about detecting a water leak.  All of these seem to be looking at the symptom (water on the ground) rather than the source (pipe flowing water).  I was curious if anyone has any exposure to any type of flow detection equipment?  I know there are a couple types of these already available, so I'm wondering how easily it would be to use either in my implementation.

What I want to do:
I have a pigeon loft with an auto waterer hooked up to a hose bib on my shop.  The hose is outside and always turned on.  I have had issues with water freezing (not a surprise) and have been addressing each of these as they come up.  I currently have shark-bite fittings inside the shop with a 25W light bulb inside the cabinet to add a bit of heat to keep the inside pipes from freezing.  I have a hose bib insulative cover that keeps radiation and most of the convection off the hose bib itself.  I now have heater tape run with the hose so that shouldn't freeze anymore.  But, there's always a chance that something in the waterer could fail or the hose could age and rupture or   I want to add a sensor of some kind to the line so that if the flow is above xx gpm or the pressure drops by xx psi, I can have my system text me so I know I'm paying to water the field.

I know there are systems for washing machines that shut off if there's a leak, but I think these use a water detector and would require that I know where the leak happens (and keep rain off of it).  I've also heard that there's some kind of device for ice makers for your fridge that's probably more appropriate.  Ice makers are a low flow device, so if the hose breaks and there's a lot of flow, it does it's thing (shuts off I think).  Beyond that, I'm not sure what to do.

Any thoughts?  Seems like an interesting issue that someone might want to take a swing at.

[dave w]

Maybe a flow meter? Although typically expensive, a vane style flow meter can detect low volume leaks. You would need a sensor at the bird end so when doing a legitimate fill the flow meter trigger would be ignored.

[bkenobi]

That's more or less what I was thinking of.  The only other thing I was thinking is that there might be a device that I could use that would allow a slow flow but then automatically shut off if it was a high flow.  Basically, an orifice with a flow rate dependent valve.  I know I could just throw an orifice in and that would make a big difference, so I'll be digging one up this evening (have one or two from old soaker hoses).

Thanks for the suggestion.  I'll look around to see if any of those will work.

[bkenobi]

If I didn't want to monitor this for failure, I could simply turn the valve down to only allow minimal flow if there was a break.  I was thinking an orifice, but closing the valve would do the same thing without any extra parts.  Actually, that might be slightly better since the valve would then be inside the semi-heated cabinet rather than outside.  So, the slug of pressurized water would be inside the heated space rather than extending out into the danger zone.  I'd still feel more comfortable with a sensor I could hook up to a PF in some way, but this would be a first step.

[bkenobi]

After a bit more searching, it appears that the valve that I'm looking for is called an "excess flow valve".  Per the description, this type of valve prevents the continued flow of media (water in this case) if there is a downstream failure of a valve, fitting, hose, etc.  Essentially, there is a check valve that shuts if the pressure differential is exceeded from the pictures I've seen.

Here's Brasscraft's page:

http://www.brasscraft.com/Products.aspx?Id=214