Monitoring make-up water

[krb]

We have had a couple of leaks in remote areas of our chill water systems that went undetected for a while because there is no way to check every area all the time for leaks. I was thinking of installing a flow meter and some kind of timer in the water make-up line to the closed loop chill water system to give an alarm to the operator when the system is making up water. If the system continues to run, he knows he has a leak somewhere. Has anyone ever done (or seen) something like this and can share how you did it?

 

[ChasBean1]

Water make-up probably won't be an analog control event which would allow you to program an alarm if, say, the make-up rate exceeds 1 GPM. Each make-up event will likely involve a valve fully opening and closing, but the totalized make-up flow could be registered by software every hour and sound an alarm upon exceeding a certain hourly make-up rate (e.g., normal x 1.5). This is how I would approach it but it's not very specific - if you already have a building automation system it would probably just invlolve the purchase and installation of a flow totalizing device with an electronic output and a few hours of control consultant's time.

 

[cjw81]

I use a water meter for my cooling tower feed which pulses every 200 gallons. The signal is sent by a simple 2 wire twisted pair to my cooling tower control computer which registers the pulses and performs functions that I have programmed into the unit such as feeding inhibitors into the tower. I can get you the specifics and model numbers if you wish. You can buy the meters for different sizes and flow pulses and just utilize that signal into your BMS or whatever.

 

[krb]

cjw81,

Can you email me the specifics on your flow meters? This sounds like it will work in this application. Please send e-mail to blackwell_kev@yahoo.com. Thanks for your help