Conserving Water is Important - and Now It's In an App!
Conserving water used by residential sprinkler systems is finally fashionable and all it took was a cool app for your phone! For the last half dozen years or so, SMART water saving technology for automatic sprinkler systems has improved drastically. Over that same time frame my company, Bio Green, has positioned itself as an industry leader in offering the latest water conservation options for upgrading older systems as well as new installations.
It was a struggle early on to convince many homeowners that investing the money to save water would pay off. Folks getting a number of estimates for their new system would see that we were the only contractors offering SMART options. To say they were skeptical is putting it mildly. At one point, we were told by our supplier that we were the only company they knew of outside the Southwest U.S. that ordered onsite weather stations instead of just rain sensors. Slowly but surely though, our persistence paid off. By 2015, more the 50% of Bio Green's new installations were SMART lawn irrigation systems.
This year, the trickle of interest in water saving technology has turned into a torrent. Two of the largest irrigation manufacturers, Rainbird and Hunter, began to offer a control box with Wifi capability that would communicate with local weather stations and modify watering to maximizing efficiency...plus it had a cool app for your phone. Now everybody is interested. 'You mean I can sit on a beach in Cali and operate my sprinkler in Fairfax?' Awesome!
The Next Wave of SMART Irrigation Technology is Here
This new wave of interest is still relatively shallow (sticking with the water metaphor). A weather-based controller can make your sprinkler system water more efficient, but it is just the tip of the iceberg (ice...water...close enough). Multiple additional products offer advances like pressure regulation at each head, flow meters, soil sensors, etc. that should all be considered when designing a truly efficient system nowadays. In many cases, these less sexy options will save a great deal more water than the fancy WiFi control box, but have yet to be embraced by the sprinkler buying public.
The irrigation industry has taken a giant step in garnering the public's interest in water conservation with these new controllers. Now, at the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, we need to get those whippersnappers to look past their phones to the other proven SMART technologies available. We’ll be looking in the winter off-season for a celebrity to tweet about them!
Author: Dave Schrader, the NOVA Lawn Guru
This new wave of interest is still relatively shallow (sticking with the water metaphor). A weather-based controller can make your sprinkler system water more efficient, but it is just the tip of the iceberg (ice...water...close enough). Multiple additional products offer advances like pressure regulation at each head, flow meters, soil sensors, etc. that should all be considered when designing a truly efficient system nowadays. In many cases, these less sexy options will save a great deal more water than the fancy WiFi control box, but have yet to be embraced by the sprinkler buying public.
The irrigation industry has taken a giant step in garnering the public's interest in water conservation with these new controllers. Now, at the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, we need to get those whippersnappers to look past their phones to the other proven SMART technologies available. We’ll be looking in the winter off-season for a celebrity to tweet about them!
Author: Dave Schrader, the NOVA Lawn Guru
