Hey everyone, I wanted to share a project I recently worked on to track water usage in my home. It’s been a fascinating journey, and I hope my experience can inspire others or provide some useful insights!
The goal was to monitor water consumption from different sources, such as the shower, irrigation system, and appliances like the dishwasher and washing machine. I decided to differentiate between time-based consumption and consumption per use. For example, the shower’s usage is time-based, while the washing machine’s usage is measured per cycle.
Here’s a quick overview of what I did:
-
Time-Based Consumption:
- I created a template sensor to represent the flow of water. For the shower, it’s set to 11 liters per minute when active.
- Using an integral (Riemann sum), I calculated the total consumption over time. This required matching the
unit_timewith the sensor’sunit_of_measurement.
-
Per Use Consumption:
- For appliances like the washing machine, I set up a counter to track the number of uses and then calculated the total water consumption based on that count.
One challenge I faced was customizing the device class in the energy dashboard. Initially, the GUI didn’t allow me to set the device class directly, so I had to manually edit the configuration.yaml file. This was a bit tricky, but it worked out in the end!
Overall, this project has given me a much better understanding of how water is used in my home. It’s been a great way to promote efficiency and awareness. I’m really happy with how it turned out and would love to hear if anyone else has tried something similar or has tips for improvement!
Thanks for reading, and happy smart home tinkering! 
