Water flow meter adapter for residential fire service sprinkler systems

Abstract

An adapter for a meter chamber provides proportional metering of a flow through a maincase that is sufficiently accurate at large flow rates to avoid the unmetered loss of significant quantities of water. An essentially unobstructed passageway is provided under the meter chamber to provide a free flow of water through a path that can be made large enough to avoid flow blockage by debris, even if the path through the meter becomes blocked. Thus, the adapter is particularly useful for installation in residential fire service mains. The adapter includes a chamber housing into which the meter chamber may be inserted, a bypass plate to hold the meter chamber in place, and a bypass to provide the passageway through which the free flow of water flows. The chamber housing includes inlet and outlet apertures, as does the bypass. The bypass plate separates a passageway including the meter chamber from the essentially unobstructed passageway, and the chamber housing is arranged so that essentially all of the water entering the passageway in which the meter is positioned flows through the meter chamber. A register on a maincase in which an adapter containing a positive displacement meter chamber is provided may be calibrated to accurately register the volume of water flowing through both chambers of the adapter at significant flow rates. The adapter thus transforms a positive displacement meter chamber housed within into a proportional flow meter.