“When the convenience of automa- tion and freshwater come together, there is a high propensity for waste,” says Russ Jundt, founder of Conserva Irrigation based in Glen Allen, Virginia. “Most landscape irrigation systems are programmed to water automatically by a simple controller two to three times per week, regardless of current weath- er patterns or conditions. The zone’s run times are often based more on ‘gut feeling’ than on science, and these run times are most likely not adjusted to meet the seasonal water requirements of plants.”
Jundt adds that the “set it and forget it” mentality leads to little or no over- sight and water being wasted. “In fact, U.S. households waste over a trillion gallons of water each year and 1.5 billion gallons daily on irrigation losses alone,” Jundt says. “Clearly, irrigation is an area in dire need of remediation at many properties, and smart controllers are a key component for improving efficiency.”
WHY SMART CONTROLLERS MATTER Smart controllers have the ability to adjust their schedule based on the weather, while with a traditional controller a contractor may be changing the schedule four to six times a year. “Think of smart controllers as a thermostat for your outdoors,” Jundt says. “None of us would ever heat or cool our home on a timer signaling to the HVAC system to run arbitrarily based upon a predetermined schedule. Instead, we employ a thermostat to discern when and for how long the sys- tem should run to achieve the desired result. Similarly and intuitively, it does not make sense to run your irrigation system on a predetermined schedule with a simple timer, yet tens of millions of systems do just that each day.” Traditional controllers are similar to a programmable light timer you’d use on vacation. You can tell a controller what days and time to come on and how long you want it to run, but that’s it. The number of times it gets changed is really going to depend on the water manager.
“It’s very uncommon to have a water manager say ‘Okay, I’m going to look at what the ET (evapotranspiration) rates have been for the past three days, and I’m going to develop a schedule based upon that,’ because the math and the
formula to get from ET to a run time, or a watering time, is pretty exten- sive,” says Eric Santos, vice president of irrigation services for BrightView Landscape Maintenance, based in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. “You’d have to do that every day and for every zone on the controller.”
Instead, managers are using their educated experience to make a deci- sion on how much time to increase or decrease when making adjustments to a traditional controller. “A smart controller uses a combina- tion of historical, current, and future weather data to discern when and how much water to deploy through the irrigation system,” Jundt says. Each manufacturer has a different proprietary way of coming up with that data and sending it to the controller but the ET rate is particularly important. It is calculated based on solar radiation, temperature, humidity and wind. Another major feature of smart con- trollers is their connectivity.
“Now that we have connectivity into that controller what’s really awesome is I can integrate flow sensing and flow monitoring into that controller,” Santos says. With this level of connectivity, the controller can send an alert when there is an abnormal flow condition. “Every one of our customers can relate to the issue of where they had either a main line break, or a stuck valve and water ran for 24 hours,” San- tos says. “Now you have the ability to have flow sensing, or you can program the clock to shut itself down and send
(Right) Eric Santos, vice president of irrigation services for BrightView Landscape Maintenenace. (Above) A technician programs a commercial
irrigation controller. Photos: BrightView
you an alert.”
Santos says that when he talks to customers about smart controllers, although they think the controller is altering its schedule based on the weather is neat, the idea of the control- ler shutting itself down during a leak is something they can all relate to. “To them, it’s like ‘Jeez, really? Wow, I just had that issue a month ago. How soon can you put this thing in?’” Santos says. “That’s starting to really provide more value to our customers than its self-adjusting capabilities.”
UPDATING A SYSTEM
Conserva Irrigation only installs smart controllers as part of their core value proposition. Jundt says it’s relatively simple to update any system regardless of age, but it is important to test the entire system and collect the zone data before removing the old timer. “Keep in mind that fixing all leaks
National Association of Landscape Professionals 19
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
