I'm not aware of anything better for that price.

A side note: some years ago my neighbors (illegally) routed their washing machine drain to dump directly into our backyard. It's a 35 unit complex do the washer runs nearly non-stop.

I asked the owners to fix it and they didn't. I said something to the city about it and they "started the process" to look into it. A couple weeks passed.

Well, shit, I have some tools. So I (illegally) plugged the drain.

It's been about 6 years and not only is there no more washing machine water coming into my yard, I have never heard a peep about it.

Just sayin'.

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Civilize the mind, but make savage the body.

- Chinese proverb

What do you mean when you say wastewater? Is this sewage treatment effluent? Industrial effluent stream from a bio/aerobic system or RO system or IX system?

...or to put it another way, what are you worried about finding? Bacteria? Turbidity? TDS? TSS? Specific heavy metals (Pb, As, Cr)? Salts (Nitrates, phosphates, etc.)? Radionuclides (U235, Ra226)?

Also, how are you intending to get samples? Is this an open sewer style effluent or is it piped? If its piped are you sure you want to break into an operating process pipe? There may be safety and liability issues there.


And finally, the systems you linked provide real time monitoring. This is good for process control or is there is an acute concern about some contaminant escaping, but do you really need real time monitoring? Or is a weekly / monthly / quarterly grab-sample and a $100 lab work-up sufficient?

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's

Ah, I probably used the wrong term. Should have said "storm water". We're just trying to measure flow.

A couple of these and some pipe in the right configuration and your worries are over...

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Civilize the mind, but make savage the body.

- Chinese proverb

I've thought about doing exactly the same thing many times but this is a slightly different situation:
-This is a stormwater pipe which drains about 30 acres of land in Florida where we can get a lot of rain.
-The adjacent land is basically the last undeveloped piece of land in a very affluent coastal town in Florida. Without the drain pipe it cannot be developed. With the drain pipe it's probably worth $15mil
-The owners of the adjacent parcel are billionaires
-The son of the owners was mayor of the town for two terms
-I don't know why they care about what's basically a trivial sum of money to them but I suspect it's more about them doing what they want and getting away with it.

I worked in that industry for 10 years in the '90s. $8,000 seems a lot for a sampler. Check out Teledyne ISCO.
http://www.teledyneisco.com/water-and-wastewater/samplers/products
But I don't think you really want to do your own testing. What are you going to do with the samples? You'll have to have them analyzed by a lab. What parameters are you going to want to run them for? Some parameters are cheap (BOD, SS, pH are in the $10s). Others are much more expensive (volatiles, semi-volatiles are in the hundreds of dollars). What industry is your neighbor in? Do they manufacture something or is just sanitary waste they are discharging? What potentially could he be discharging that concerns you? Your local water reclamation district probably would be much more interested and inclined to sample his wastewater and there are likely local and federal regulatory limits that would likely get him in big trouble if there was anything of concern.
The sampler you're looking at would get you a composite of samples over a period of time. But grab samples would give you a good snapshot. But again, what analyses are you going to run? And there are protocols and procedures for collecting, storing, and preserving the samples before getting them to a lab.
I would recommend you hire an environmental consulting firm or environmental engineering firm or environmental lab. They could help you determine what to sample for and do the testing at a much lower price. And their data would be meaningful.

In that case I'd plug it for sure.

When people do something illegal or immoral directly against me and I cannot expect justice by legal means I take direct action back at them, illegal or otherwise. They won't want to go to the authorities to point out that someone plugged their illegal drain.

If that fails, murder is always an option.

Just make sure you delete this thread.

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Civilize the mind, but make savage the body.

- Chinese proverb

What is the size and material of pipe?
Is it generally open at the discharge end or submerged in a pond, river or lake? This is important to know if the pipe is generally full of water or not.
If the pipe is full there are much simpler and cheaper solution, including paddle-wheel designs and basic ultrasonic units.
If its partially filled you'll need something a little more fancy: http://www.nikron.com.ar/...20filled%20piple.pdf

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's

I hear you. I'm bound by a chain of command on this one. If it were my choice you can bet some debris would mysteriously clog the pipe.

It's a 24" ribbed plastic pipe sitting under 12-36" of topsoil. Most of the time it's only maybe 1/8 full.

Thank you for the link. What should I expect that to run?

This sounds like those LDPE corrugated drainage pipes you can get from Home Depot. I'm not sure how well ultrasonic units will work here. You'll need to talk the the manufacturer's rep. to confirm.
Ultrasonic flow meters typically run $4k to $8k.

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's