Hi, I would like to leave my household water on if I'm ever away for extended periods. I have a few items that occasionally use water such as a motion sensing sprinkler (few seconds) to scare critters from the garden. What I'm looking to do is detect any amount of constant flow (using an in-line flow sensor) from a pipe leak or burst, over an extended period (few minutes adjustable), and subsequently cut the power to my 120V water pump. Thank you in advance for your help.

 

How deep into electronics do you want to get with this? I can picture a solution that's very simple in terms of electronics/assembly, but it would require programming.

With an Arduino and an off the shelf SSR, this should be very easy. The nature of the flow sensor and its signals would need to be known, and it might require a small amount of interface circuitry to the Arduino.

If you prefer to avoid coding, or if you prefer to get more hands on with the electronics side of it, I'm sure there are clever solutions with logic gates, 555 timers, and such. Others here would be far more qualified than I am to help with that.

In either case, do you have a flow sensor picked out already? If so, please share model number, specs, datasheet, etc.

 

Thank you for your reply. I would like to keep it as simple as possible with more hands-on electronics. I don't have a flow meter picked out yet, but I was considering a few fairly cheap ones from China sold on Amazon (all seemingly with the non-NPT threads unfortunately). I have been looking at 555 timers and logic gates etc. Arduino sounds very fun and functional, though I'm not sure I have the time for the learning curve.