Water Flow Rate Units

Configuration
1

Hey team!

I recently purchased and received a Hydrific Droplet. (https://shop.hydrificwater.com).

They added local MQTT HA support (or any other platform that supports MQTT) which got me excited enough to pull the trigger.

The water flow rate is reported in l/m which I changed to g/m, and looks like this in developer tools:

unit_of_measurement: gal/min
device_class: volume_flow_rate
icon: mdi:water-circle
friendly_name: Droplet Flow Rate

That is all well and good and appears to function as I’d expect.

I created an integral like this:

  - platform: integration
    source: sensor.droplet_flow_rate
    name: "Total Water Usage"
    round: 2
    method: trapezoidal

in an effort to see total water usage.

I also wrapped it in a utility_meter like this:

utility_meter:
  daily_water_usage:
    source: sensor.total_water_usage
    cycle: daily

What I am having trouble figuring out, is the units for both of these are being reported as:

state_class: total
source: sensor.droplet_flow_rate
unit_of_measurement: gal/minh
icon: mdi:chart-histogram
friendly_name: Total Water Usage

for total water usage, and:

state_class: total_increasing
status: collecting
last_period: 0
last_valid_state: 11.28
last_reset: 2025-07-17T13:26:39.395012+00:00
next_reset: 2025-07-18T00:00:00-07:00
unit_of_measurement: gal/minh
friendly_name: daily_water_usage

For the daily utility sensor.

I would have expected both to simply report “gallons”.

I’m fairly confident it’s me doing something stupid, and hoping someone can set me straight.

Cheers!
Matt

2

Change your integral time unit to minutes instead of hours, which I believe is the default.

Also, you’re probably going to want left sum instead of the default trapezoidal. Frequent threads related to this issue.

1 Like
3

Thank you sir. Will try that shortly. Appreciate the help.

4

Worked perfectly.

Thank you again.

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Matt

5

Thanks for posting this. Does this setup allow you to use the water usage on the Energy dashboard?

6

@Automated_House great idea! I just checked. Yes, it does!

I needed to add this and then restart HA:

homeassistant:
  customize:
    sensor.total_water_usage:
      device_class: "water"
      unit_of_measurement: gal

sensor:
  - platform: integration
    source: sensor.droplet_flow_rate
    name: "Total Water Usage"
    round: 2
    unit_time: min
    method: left

Then it worked!

2 Likes
7

Perfect! Got mine working too.

For others that find this and are adverse to YAML like me, here’s how I did it.

  1. Create helper to convert/sum the Droplet flow in gal/min to gallons. Use the Integral Sensor option. Set time unit to minutes and choose Left Riemann sum option
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  1. Create Utility Meter Helper. Choose the integral sensor from step 1 as the input sensor. I have it reset on the same day as my water bill.
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You should now have 3 entities under your Droplet device

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Problem is neither of the new helpers show in the Energy dashboard as an option because its looking for entities with device class = water.

  1. now a tiny bit of YAML is needed. Use the file editor add-on to find your configuration.yaml file. Add this tiny bit of code. Make sure the sensor.XYZ part matches the entity ID for the water utility created in step 2.
homeassistant:
    customize:
        sensor.water_utility_meter:
            device_class: "water"

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  1. restart Home Assistant and edit the energy dashboard
2 Likes
8

You can just reload " Locations & Customizations" under Developer Tools and not have to restart Home Assistant.

3 Likes
9

good to know. Thanks!

1 Like
10

@Automated_House Thank you for this.

1 Like