Water Meter to Count On : Drought: A pair of inventors created a device to monitor home use. It’s part of flood of products appearing in the current crisis.
When they first noticed stories about the drought six months ago, Ken Avicola and Richard Morton started thinking about water conservation. To the San Diego engineers--and part-time inventors--the signals were clear.
“We were reading about possible water rationing,” says Avicola. “We wanted to invent something that would fill a need or solve a problem.”
They were not first in line. For years, eco-minded manufacturers have been churning out low-flush toilets, low-flow shower heads and other water-saving devices. Says Avicola: “We decided that conservation begins with information and most people don’t have any idea how much water they are using in the first place.”
So they designed an easy-to-install monitor that provides a digital reading, in gallons, of household use. It can be set to measure water used for each toilet flush, shower or bath.
“If you have to cut your consumption by 30%, how on earth do you know it? This gives you a simple, easy way to tell,” Avicola says. The two men got their idea from looking at their water meters. “It’s very messy. You have to pick up this heavy concrete lid--the meter case is a spider pit--and then you have to read all these little dials and numbers and convert cubic feet to gallons.
“It is a great inconvenience at the very least, and our idea was to make it easy, to plug it in by the kitchen sink.”
They think they have succeeded. Their two-part system uses an acoustic sensor attached to the main water pipe. The sensor picks up the sound of water flowing through the pipe and is connected to an electronics package that plugs into an outlet and feeds the signal into the house’s wiring. The readout unit can be plugged into any outlet to pick up the signal.
“It’s electronics plus acoustics. We think the sensor method of using the noise generated by the flowing water to measure the volume is unique,” Avicola says.
The sensor can be attached to the water pipe with a rubber band. In fact, the biggest challenge was to make the monitor easy to install, says Avicola: “We knew that if you have to call a plumber, that would kill it.”
Although Avicola and Morton have invented several laser-related devices for the defense industry, this is their first consumer item.
The pair have built a working prototype, home-tested it and filed for a patent. And, with no interest in producing it themselves, they have begun talking to manufacturers.
“The initial reaction is positive, but it takes time to evaluate a product like this,” Avicola says. “It’s a little frustrating; we feel like we’re missing the boat. Water is very much in the news now and if we had it on the market, it would certainly sell.”
He anticipates the monitor will retail for less than $50.
The concept of a household water monitor has received a favorable review on several counts:
-- Officials struggling with California’s worst drought on record see its potential as an educational tool. “It could be incredibly important,” says Matthew Puffer, a conservation division analyst for Metropolitan Water District. “Your water bill doesn’t really illuminate much, and it’s very hard to cut down on water use if you can’t measure what you are using. For years, water companies have been trying to educate people in trying to read their meters, and they still haven’t done it.”
-- The monitor seems to be the first of its kind. “I can’t think of any meter company that makes a product for the individual homeowner,” says Rob Sears, western regional manager for Badger Meter Inc. of Milwaukee, one of the nation’s “big three” meter manufacturers. “Our market is the utility industry, not the individual consumer.”
Badger manufactures a remote “Read-O-Matic” system--a generator attached to the water meter that sends a pulse to an odometer-style remote reader. But it is designed to assist meter readers, not residents, and is relatively complicated to install, he says. “I don’t know that it would play a big role in the California drought crisis.”
Nevertheless, at Badger’s regional sales office in Petaluma, some customers are buying the $60 generator remotes. “I think people would love a small, remote reader that wouldn’t be hard to install,” staffer Deborah Ducousso says. “We’ve been getting lots of calls in the last few weeks, particularly from trailer parks and apartment complexes. People want to read the meter without having to go out and lift the lid.”
What the home monitor does not signal is a new wave of technology to ease the water plight in the shadow of increased rationing. Many conservation techniques just now discovered by newly concerned Southern Californians have waited in the wings for years.
Earl M. Sacks of Claremont incorporated Water Conservation Systems Inc. in 1983, but it didn’t grow much over the years, he says, “because nobody in California cared about water until now.” He manufactures a Hydrovisor tensiometer, a buried meter that senses the moisture content in the soil and allows sprinkler and drip irrigation systems to water only if plants need it, and a Rain-Guard that prevents automatic systems from activating if it rains.
“Suddenly,” he says, “there has been an explosion of interest.”
On the East Coast, Michael Wales, president of Resources Conservation Inc., is exuberant. “The drought has driven this thing through the roof--it’s total insanity,” he says. Wales started his Connecticut company after the 1974 energy crisis and manufactures a full line of aerating shower heads and faucets and a toilet-tank water saver called the Superbowl.
He is a major retail supplier in California, and business has boomed, he says: “We are running around the clock. We have quadrupled our business and employees in the last month. We struggled for years to get this water conservation message across to people, but it took a crisis to do it.”
Experts say, however, that new consumer kinship with soil-moisture sensors, low-flow shower heads and low-flush toilets should not lead to the notion that there’s a lot more technology still to come.
Marc Merson, producer of this spring’s Eco Expo, an environmental consumer trade show at the Convention Center, has spent the last year shopping for environmental products. Water conservation products will play a major role at the April 12-14 show, but there won’t be many surprises.
“Most of the technology is known,” he says. “What’s different is the range and variety. Appliances are getting better and are more attractively designed. . . . Even the upscale manufacturers are designing them. And now manufacturers of . . . dishwashers and washers, which already are conscious of energy use, are starting to emphasize how much, or how little, water they use.”
Jim Bell of San Diego, who has been an ecological consultant and designer for 15 years, suddenly finds himself in demand from unlikely groups. Rotarians want to hear his talk on “An Ecological Designer’s Plan for a Water Secure Future,” and developers are inquiring about “gray water” systems, an interest “unheard of in the past,” Bell says.
He predicts that gray water systems (which, if legalized, could divert bath and sink water away from the sewer to outside use or as flush water for toilets) will be the next technology for home conservation. But Bell says he doesn’t see much beyond that: “You can’t get much more efficient. There are toilets that will use as little as one quart per flush, but after that it’s a matter of cutting back: just take a shower every other day.”
In short, with technological water-saving fixes running out, devices like a household water monitor might symbolize a new conservation ethic--not only in California but throughout the country.
“There are no magic devices that will solve the conservation problem,” says Fred Elwell, president of the American Water Works Assn., the professional society for water suppliers. “What the water community is exploring now are ways to affect peoples’ behavior--ways to get people to change their habits and use less water.”
