Performance of the residential water meters under different conditions of installation

Residential cold and hot potable water-meters are the most popular measurement instruments (MI) of legal metrology regulation used for custody transfer. The performance of utility water meters of different design (single jet vane wheel meter, concentric multi-jet vane wheel meter, volumetric meter with ring piston) with nominal flow rate 1.5 m3/h has been investigated when installed downstream from five different gasket diameters - 15.0 mm, 14.2 mm, 12.7mm, 10.0 mm and 8.7 mm. Effects of turning of the meter around the pipe axis investigated too. The largest positive percentage errors up to 25% are re- ported for the 8.7 mm gaskets for single-jet vane wheel meter while volumetric meters are not sensitive to gasket bore reduction. Turning around the pipe axis procure negative additional percentage error which value at lower flow range reaches up to -20%...-30% for some type of meters. Tested volumetric meters are the less sensitive to considered installation effects in comparison with vane meters.