How to choose the best water meter in India

Tell us where the meter will be used, what it needs to measure, who will collect the readings and which documents your project requires. Say whether you need an individual connection meter, a sub-meter, a building inlet meter or a meter for a network or process line.

Usually chosen from our range:

• A home: a flat or a house. A single-jet or multi-jet meter at DN15 or DN20, with R160 where low flows matter, and a smart version where readings are collected remotely. See mechanical water meters and smart water meters.
• A housing society. A meter in every flat, read together: volumetric R200 meters, which read to 0.05 L, or smart meters on LoRaWAN, NB-IoT or M-Bus, and prepaid meters where the society bills in advance. See water meters for housing societies.
• A building inlet or a bulk supply. A Woltman meter from DN50, or a bulk ultrasonic meter from DN40 to DN150 with M-Bus, pulse and 4–20 mA outputs. See ultrasonic water meters.
• A utility network. Bulk meters at sources and reservoirs, battery-powered electromagnetic meters for district metered areas, which measure flow in both directions, and smart consumer meters for billing. See water meters for utilities.
• Industry and large pipes. An electromagnetic flow meter, from DN10 to DN3000, an insertion meter for pipes from DN150 to DN2000, or a clamp-on ultrasonic meter that fits outside the pipe, up to DN6000. See electromagnetic flow meters.

Ask us to check the expected operating flows against the selected model's flow ratings. Share periods of very low usage and any short peaks. Confirm the installation requirements and the model's applicable measurement range in its datasheet.

The R value is Q3 divided by Q1. The higher it is, the lower the flow the meter measures accurately: an R160 meter measures down to 1/160 of its permanent flow, and an R250 meter to 1/250. That matters wherever water runs slowly for long periods, such as a dripping tap, a leaking cistern or a building at night.

For a class 2 meter on cold water, the permissible error is ±5% from Q1 up to Q2, and ±2% from Q2 to Q4. Some meters are still described by the older classes B and C, where class C holds its accuracy to lower flows.

Oversizing is the common mistake. A meter larger than its flow needs spends most of its life at the bottom of its range, where small flows are measured least accurately, or not at all. Size it to the flows the line really carries, then check the pipe size matches.

Confirm who will collect readings and where the data needs to appear. For pulse or remote reading, check compatibility between the meter, logger, gateway or network, and software. If you need prepaid operation or supply control, ask about the supported meter and system combination.

• Pulse-ready. A mechanical meter prepared for a pulse output, so it can be read remotely later without being replaced. Ours cover multi-jet meters from DN15 to DN40, volumetric from DN15 to DN20 and Woltman from DN50 to DN200.
• Smart. The meter sends its own readings. LoRaWAN carries them by long-range radio to gateways; NB-IoT uses a mobile operator's network, with no gateway of your own; M-Bus is a wired bus for reading many meters directly in one building.
• Prepaid. Credit is loaded on a contactless card, and the meter controls the supply against it.
• Valve control. Smart meters with a built-in valve, from DN15 to DN40, let a utility or a society shut and restore the supply.

Readings from smart meters are collected by gateways and data concentrators and managed in Meterexo, our meter data management software.