During the winter months, when the temperature starts to drop, homeowners may choose to leave a faucet dripping to prevent frozen pipes. When you have a small drip flowing, you may not see consistent or immediate usage appear in the Flume app. See why Flume may not record usage every minute, and how you can locate this drip within the app below.

The lowest flow rate that Flume can detect depends on the water meter. In general, smaller water meters can detect lower flow rates. For example, most homeowners have 5/8" or 3/4" water meters. On these meters, Flume can detect flow rates between 0.01 and 0.03 gallons per minute (gpm). That equates to roughly one gallon per hour. On larger water meters, Flume can still detect very low flows. For instance, on 1" and 1 1/2" meters, Flume can detect flow rates between 0.02 and 0.07 gpm.

We find that when most customers purposely leave their sink dripping, the drip is actually under the smallest rate that Flume can register. However this does not mean that Flume isn’t registering the usage.

Once the drip accumulates to the smallest per minute amount that Flume can detect, this usage can be seen within the app. For example, say your faucet is dripping at .001 gpm. It will take 10 minutes before that usage accumulates for you to see a small amount of usage (.01 gpm) appear. Note that if you are using other appliances that drip will be included as part of that larger usage. To see the water usage from the drip, navigate to the detailed page of the Flume app. Once there, it's best to scroll to the late evening or early morning hours when you're likely not using any other water (see screenshot below).

Feel free to contact our support team at support@flumewater.com with any questions.