John,
Welcome to the fun world of hydraulic modeling! It's great for puzzle solver-minds; never ending. If you are using ArcMap or ArcGIS Pro, for this type of analysis, there are a handful of modeling software's available in the water modeling industry that operate within Esri software. One of our Esri partners, Innovyze, along with one of Esri's solution engineers, Jason Channin, gave a good presentation on a hydraulic modeling tool working inside ArcGIS here. Outside of modeling software itself, there is quite a lot that goes on in a water network. You may find this video useful - it covers how water systems function (by one of my favorite youtuber channels, Practical Engineering). Feel free to reply with what you are trying to solve/answer, and the Geonet community here will be glad to help you along the journey.
Respectfully,
Martin
John,
You have entered a new world. Hydraulic modeling is fun and challenging. I have built 8 hydraulic models in ArcGIS and InfoWater (1 was in InfoWorks ICM). I recommend InfoWater (if you are using ArcGIS Pro, then go with InfoWater Pro). Check out the https://forums.innovyze.com/. Your questions can be answered there.
I recommend ditching EPANET. EPANET is the behind the scenes engine that runs InfoWater and InfoWater Pro which allow you to do your modeling in ArcGIS and Geodatabases.
Any thoughts on how this might change, or how one might "future-proof" their models going forward, now that Innovyze has been acquired by AutoDesk? Are we going back to CAD based models? Will we loose geodatabase support and have to convert everything to shapefiles? Is ESRI going to release their own competing Hydraulic Modelling application, perhaps as part of the new Utility Network?