Sika: Submetering Water at the Fixture Level

According to Andy Buchanan, president of Sika USA, the meters make sense for any building that wants to control its water usage—anything from a single-family home to multifamily residential, hotels, offices, or any other building type. At $100 per unit, plus $300 for a central data receiver, the units are relatively affordable, but the cost could add up for an entire floor or building. Larger buildings might also need $200 signal repeaters—one per floor is likely—to bridge the gap in wireless communication from the meters to the central receiver. The receiver includes a software package that allows for data collection, trend spotting, and usage alarms.

The submeters fill a distinct gap for monitoring water use inside buildings. Whether it’s the right gap to fill is up for debate, however. “The biggest sticking point in water metering is the installation cost of the meters; people hate cutting pipe to stick one of these things in there,” Dan Ackerstein, a consultant and expert in sustainability for existing facilities, told