SMART IRRIGATION The end in sight
Moberly and his team are using an irrigation audit to determine the effectiveness of his client’s system to conserve water and save money.
Te final steps to the project are taking everything learned throughout the auditing process and developing a plan to incorporate pressure-regulated sprinkler heads and flow sensing on all of the properties. “Here in Tennessee, (pressure-regulating sprinklers) are not a mandate yet, but we want to get ahead of the curve,” Moberly says. “Te client that we’re working for, they’re excited to be ahead of the curve here in our local market with that.” Moberly says the goal is to get through all of the systems
this season, and then have everything running smoothly and updated next year. But thanks to irrigation’s always-improving technology,
this project will never truly be finished. “In five years, I’m sure we’ll be revisiting the controllers
and there’ll be something new that we can add to that,” Moberly says. “Hopefully by then, we have some wireless components and then we can get flow sensing on every- thing. It’s always evolving.”
Looking back
At the core of this project, Moberly learned the impor- tance of taking the time to complete full audits. He advises others to make sure they follow the Irrigation Association’s auditing process, as it can show a system’s shortcomings an irrigation professional might not know about. “It all starts at the audits and gathering all the data first,” Moberly says. “Even if you don’t have the smart controller
on there, you can use that audit information to actually do a schedule that will really save quite a bit of water, because you’re going to eliminate as much waste as possible.” Another new component that Moberly learned through
the project was a full reliance on technology and the inter- net. He was no stranger to smart controllers and cutting- edge irrigation technology, but due to the pandemic, the contact he had with the client was fully virtual via Zoom meetings. Moberly and his team also managed the project portfolio completely online. Trough software, Moberly and his team can send any
alerts of issues out in the field right to the client, especially for the systems they were able to put flow sensing on. “Managing everything online has been very eye open-
ing,” Moberly says. “It definitely took away some of the limitations.” Tis project gave Moberly the ability to marry a difficult
water conservation plan with an in-depth auditing process. It also served as an education opportunity for not only him and his team, but for the client as well. “Tis is a cool project where we could dive deeper and then explain to the client that this is your soil type, this is how much water your soil will actually hold,” Moberly says. “A lot of it will go over their head, but it’s still cool to be the leading company in this region doing this. “I want to offer the client the most that we can and the deepest knowledge we can.”
McKenna Corson is the digital content editor for Irrigation & Lighting and can be reached at
mckennacorson@irrigation.org.
Catch cups line the turf during the extensive auditing process. It’s Moberly’s goal to complete all of the audits this season.
18 Irrigation & Lighting Summer 2022
irrigationandlighting.org
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