Water Meters
Water meters will monitor the rate of flow. The most useful to use with irrigation systems would be the ARAD water meters that have an electrical pulse that can be passed on to control systems. As an example the Hunter HC control can be installed with a water meter. The HC control when connected to the App via a mobile phone, Ipad, PC or similar will collect information and break down the amount of water that has been applied per zone so that you can calculate how many inches/cm have been applied by the week, month, year. This combined with the link to a local weather station makes a very accurate watering system that will maintain lawns and borders in top condition without wasting water because of over watering.
Not only can the control unit gather information about the water applied it can also sense when a fault occurs. It does this by checking the flow rate per zone and if a zones flow per minute rate increases then it will send an alert to you phone, ipad, pc so that you can either shut the system down via a master valve or to call an engineer and service the system if you are away.