Install: Valbia Water Shutoff + Pulse Water Mtr w/Phidgets

I purchased a Valbia water shutoff valve as discussed in this other thread. and am controlling it with a Phidgets 1018 8/8/8 controller, touched upon here.

Here are some install pics:

This is the complete install with the Valbia valve on the left and the water meter on the bottom. It was actually a pretty big project, and since I had hardly ever sweated pipe before, was a learning experience. It's a good thing my wife was out of town as I don't think she would've allowed me to cut the water main! Fortunately, there are no leaky joints.

This is a bypass design using lever-actuated ball valves (3), which I chose as I wanted to be certain that if there were any failures I could restore continuity to the house and be able to work on the system as needed. When all the levers are pointed down, water is flowing through the water meter and Valbia, and can be monitored and controlled. When all the levers are horizontal, water is bypassing the water meter and Valbia and flowing straight through the upper pipe.

Valbia and Water Meter Complete Install Photo.jpg (137.28 KiB) Viewed 4374 times

This picture shows the position sensor hookup to the digital input side of the Phidgets device. Note the grounds (yellow and black) are twisted together and the digital inputs are separate. The inputs are at positions 0 and 1.

Valbia Valve Position Sensor Hookup.jpg (129.25 KiB) Viewed 4374 times

The digital outputs control which relay operates. The control wires are the red and green ones on the right of the relay (left), entering the Phidigets 8/8/8 device (right) on its lower left, position 0 and 1 (not Ground) so that the valve can be opened or closed. The three conductor wire is the control harness for the relay module itself, attached to position 0 of the Analog Inputs, seen at the upper right of the Phidgets device.

Valbia Valve Digital Output Valve Control.jpg (114.97 KiB) Viewed 4374 times

This pic of the transformer to relay to valve is a little confused, especially since the valve hookup is not shown! Hopefully I can add some explanation. It should be noted that thanks to Berkinet's advice, this is a 24v AC valve, which is easier to hook up and perhaps a little more idiot proof than the 12v DC valve I was initially interested in.

The circuit is as follows: one of the transformer leads goes straight to input 3 on the Valbia 's power control for the return circuit. The other transformer lead splits (see wire nut) and bridges the two relay inputs to provide power. The power wires from the relays then enter the Valbia and are connected to inputs 1 and 2, to control open and close. Both are N0, so power is only applied when actuated.

Valbia Transformer to Relay Hookup.jpg (127.76 KiB) Viewed 4374 times

I created 4 devices using the Phidgets plugin, 2 to open and close, and 2 to sense the position of the valve. When the valve is opened or closed, the appropriate action is set to automatically switch off after 10 seconds.The Valbia has dry contacts to tell when the valve achieves open or closed, so it is true feedback. Once the devices are created, the valve is controllable from the iPhone via Indigo with active state feedback, and I intend to incorporate it into both my water sensor actions as well as vacation actions.

For now, I don't have the pulse sensing water meter working. Am hoping Berkinet will add this module to his great plugin.

Hope this is helpful for anyone who is looking at whole house water control. There are a lot of good solutions out there, but I thought that I'd have more flexibility and options by incorporating an industrial quality valve and a pulse sensing water meter with Phidgets. And anyway, getting the Phidgets thing going opens up more possibilities for future expansion....

edit: The water meter pulse counter is now working, using the 8/8/8 DIO board, not the Phidgets frequency counter. See link above to the Phidgets Plugin Discussion page. Looks like the frequency counter is unnecessary.

A couple of other points related to this install.

First, the unit requires 11 control/sense wires, including the relay. For this I used 3 parallel runs of 4-conductor alarm wire, labeling each with different tape colors. Because I didn't want to run 16 or 18 gauge wire for the 24v power source, I remote mounted the relay and transformer near the valve. Although a Honeywell transformer is pictured, I picked up a RainBird plug-in transformer for about $14.00 new, which works fine.

Second, I had absolutely no luck in getting the water meter couplings to completely seal with the 1" FIP sweat adapters I purchased at Home Depot - persistent VERY slow weep on both ends. In looking at other boards, there seems to be an issue with Chinese made copper pipe fittings. Literally nothing would work, including multiple wraps of teflon, pipe dope and increasing torque. So, after a thorough cleaning I sweated the pipe fittings together, with no leaks. While 3/4" might work better, it might be easiest just to sweat them up from the get-go.

double post..

When all the levers are horizontal, water is bypassing the water meter and Valbia and flowing straight through the upper pipe..

Best part of the system!

Thanks for the great writeup, I plan on doing something similar someday.

[matt (support)]

Very cool -- thanks for sharing the details (and photos!).

Korey and Matt, thanks! It's a fun project.

I wrote a couple of scripts to try to make sense of the data. The first puts the water data into today, yesterday, this week, last week, this month, last month and then the preceding 12 months. This is executed in a schedule that fires at 12:01 am each night and populates the variables.

Code: Select all

set {year:y, month:m, day:d, weekday:w} to (current date)

tell application "IndigoServer"
   log y
   log m
   log d
   log w
   
   --log {WaterUse_01_Today, WaterUse_02_Yesterday, WaterUse_03_ThisWeek, WaterUse_04_LastWeek,
   
   
   --Today and Yesterday. Second line in each sequence resets the current variable to ""
   set value of variable "WaterUse_02_Yesterday" to value of variable "WaterUse_01_Today"
   
   set value of variable "WaterUse_01_Today" to ""
   
   
   --This week and last week
   if w is Monday then
      set (value of variable "WaterUse_04_LastWeek") to (value of variable "WaterUse_03_ThisWeek")
      set value of variable "WaterUse_03_ThisWeek" to ""
   end if
   
   
   --This month and last month: Pick one of the below if you want to convert to CCF or keep at gallons. I've commented out the gallons line since most utilities report as CCF.
   if d is 1 then
      set value of variable "WaterUse_06_LastMonth" to value of variable "WaterUse_05_ThisMonth"
      --set waterUseThisMonth to value of variable "WaterUse_05_ThisMonth"   COMMENTED OUT
      set waterUseThisMonth to ((value of variable "WaterUse_05_ThisMonth") / 7481)  --converts to CCF

      set value of variable "WaterUse_05_ThisMonth" to ""
   end if
   
   
   --Prior Month historical data
   if d is 1 then
      if m is January then
         set value of variable "WaterUse_18_Dec" to waterUseThisMonth
      end if
      
      if m is February then
         set value of variable "WaterUse_07_Jan" to waterUseThisMonth
      end if
      
      if m is March then
         set value of variable "WaterUse_08_Feb" to waterUseThisMonth
      end if
      
      if m is April then
         set value of variable "WaterUse_09_Mar" to waterUseThisMonth
      end if
      
      if m is May then
         set value of variable "WaterUse_10_Apr" to waterUseThisMonth
      end if
      
      if m is June then
         set value of variable "WaterUse_11_May" to waterUseThisMonth
      end if
      
      if m is July then
         set value of variable "WaterUse_12_Jun" to waterUseThisMonth
      end if
      
      if m is August then
         set value of variable "WaterUse_13_Jul" to waterUseThisMonth
      end if
      
      if m is September then
         set value of variable "WaterUse_14_Aug" to waterUseThisMonth
      end if
      
      if m is October then
         set value of variable "WaterUse_15_Sep" to waterUseThisMonth
      end if
      
      if m is November then
         set value of variable "WaterUse_16_Oct" to waterUseThisMonth
      end if
      
      if m is December then
         set value of variable "WaterUse_17_Nov" to waterUseThisMonth
      end if
      
   end if
end tell

I saw the iCal implementation for logging recently, and that may also be helpful.

The second is an attempt at leak detection based on flow rate. It's pretty crude, and I realize that my water meter, which pulses 10 times per gallon, may in fact be a little too coarse -- that's 12.8 ounces per pulse. In the above linked thread, that water meter pulses at 50/gallon, or about 2.5 ounces per pulse, so I might think about a different one. That said, the idea here is to execute a schedule to measure water use in 30 minute intervals between 1:00 am and 5:00 am when everyone should be asleep. The pulse count is 1-10 and then >20 to try to avoid the late night toilet flush, between 1.1 and 1.6 gallons. The group "Water Measure Night Leak Detected?" sends an email.

Code: Select all

using terms from application "IndigoServer"
   tell application "IndigoServer"
      set Water_0 to value of variable "WaterUse_01_Today"
      --log Water_0
      
      delay 1800 --this is 30 minutes
      
      set Water_30min to value of variable "WaterUse_01_Today"
      --log Water_10
      
      set Water_Compare to (Water_30min - Water_0)
      log "Total measured water leak is " & Water_Compare
      
      --try to sort out a toilet flush (about a gallon to 1.6 gallons) vs a slow or large leak
      if ((Water_Compare is greater than or equal to 1) and (Water_Compare is less than or equal to 10)) or (Water_Compare is greater than 20) then
         log "possible leak"
         
         execute group "Water Measure Night Leak Detected?"
      end if
   end tell
end using terms from

--edited prior months' readings to allow choice of CCF.

I spoke with one of the tech support reps at Badger Meter company, who make the Orion series of centrally reporting RF enabled meters. We discussed leak detection strategies. In the Orion series, Badger has implemented distributed leak detection so that the central monitoring system can determine if a household/company has sprung a leak. It works like this:

Each day is broken down into 24 one-hour periods. During that day, the meter detects if there is at least one hour in which there is no water flow detected. If that is met, there is no leak. However, if there is flow during every hour, a leak is assumed and the utility is notified.

That is different from my solution above, which looks for defined periods in which no flow is anticipated at all. I wonder if that is how the FloLogic determines leak detection -- that unit, however, states detection of as little as one ounce per minute. I'll post later if I can figure out how to set that up easily. Any advice would of course be welcome.

I wrote a script to detect a catastrophic water leak here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=14955