Most people choose a flow meter starting from accuracy and budget. That is backwards, and it is how you end up owning a very accurate instrument that cannot see your fluid. Start here instead.
Ask this first, always. It decides everything else — and getting it wrong is the most dangerous error in flow measurement.
Can you see through it? That is the actual question, and it decides the technology.
Only applies to portable clean-fluid instruments.
Four questions, in a specific order, because the order is the whole point. Most people work this list backwards — starting with accuracy and budget — and that is how you end up owning a very accurate meter that cannot see your fluid.
Full pipe? If not, no clamp-on meter can help you, regardless of price. It will report roughly double the real flow with no error flag. You need area velocity.
Clean or dirty? Transit-time and Doppler are opposites, not tiers. Transit-time needs a clear fluid; Doppler needs a dirty one. Each fails completely at the other's job.
Portable or fixed? Not a budget decision — a question decision. Many pipes occasionally, or one pipe continuously?
Only now does pipe size, accuracy, turndown, and price matter.
It does not know your straight run, your wall thickness, or whether your ductile iron has a delaminated cement liner. Those decide whether the meter works. Send us the line details and a Seztec application engineer will confirm — or tell you it will not work, which happens, and which we would rather say now.
Send pipe size, material, wall thickness, lining, fluid, and available straight run. An application engineer will confirm the choice — or tell you clamp-on is wrong for the line.
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