dscl,
I understand what you are trying to track here and I assume you want to track it over time, but separately from your house water usage or lawn watering.
I have an idea for you if you think you are a good "scrounger". Go to your city or local municipality's water/sewer department and ask them if they have any old house water meters that are being scrapped, but still operational. They may have some older, purely mechanical meters that were removed for some upgrade reason or maybe not quite accurate enough for billing purposes. Anything other than being inoperative. If they are just something that gets tossed, they may likely let you have one for the cost of the recyclable metal worth, or maybe just let you have it, if you are a really GREAT SCROUNGER.
Then, just plumb it in and watch it go 'round! You can record the current reading on the day you put into service and then read it every day, week or month and record the usage in a ledger. That will show you how much you used and when you used the most water.
Obviously, you are not going to be tracking how many quarts you have used in an hour, but these meters should work OK for what you want over an extended period of time. Many read out in cubic feet, as opposed to gallons or what not, so you would have to get used to reading the meter and converting the volume to the graduations that you need.
catfishnut
