What are the main hidden dangers of smart water meters?
However, in actual use, smart water meters occasionally experience inaccuracies. What factors can cause these inaccuracies?
1. Natural wear and tear over time
Any smart water meter has a fixed warranty period. Over time, internal components will gradually age, directly leading to a decrease in metering accuracy. Over time, the meter's measurement error will gradually increase, ultimately causing actual water consumption to differ from metered data, resulting in "hidden water loss."
II. The Dual Impact of Environment and Installation Conditions
The accuracy of smart water meters is highly dependent on the installation environment and construction specifications. The following five conditions are the main contributing factors:
Humid/Corrosive Environments: Moisture or corrosive gases in the air can easily penetrate the meter body, causing rust on internal components and damaging the metering mechanism.
Extended Sunlight Exposure: Direct sunlight can increase the water temperature within the meter and release gases, which can cause condensation on the dial, affecting readings, and can also breed moss and clog the metering channel.
External Vibration Interference: Frequent vibration can accelerate wear of the meter movement, reduce gear meshing accuracy, and directly affect metering accuracy.
Improper Installation: For example, tilting a meter when it is required to be installed horizontally, misaligning the pipes before and after the meter, or failing to meet the required straight pipe length requirements during installation can disrupt the stable water flow and cause metering errors.
Concealed Installation Locations: If a water meter is installed in a hard-to-see corner, leakage or component failures cannot be detected in time, leading to long-term problems and missed repair opportunities.
The following figure demonstrates proper installation.
3. Differences in Water Meter Quality
Smart water meters integrate IoT technology, placing higher demands on production processes and technical standards. Quality directly determines metering reliability.
High-quality smart water meters must comply with national metrology standards and feature stable signal transmission, data storage, and accurate metering. Using non-regular brands or substandard products can lead not only to metering discrepancies but also to frequent data errors, system failures, and other issues during subsequent water billing, potentially causing disputes between users and water suppliers.
Wuxi Zhongyi Smart Technology Co., Ltd. focuses on the development and manufacturing of smart water meters, energy meters, gas meters, covering more than 90 countries around the world. If you are interested in smart water meters, Electricity meter and gas meters,please contact Zhongyi Smart!
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