More than nine billion gallons of water is used each day nationwide. Most of it is used for landscape irrigation, but up to 50% is wasted, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Aging, inefficient irrigation systems that leak, or that overwater on programmed schedules– regardless of the weather or how saturated the soil is below the ground surface– play a major role in irrigation water waste. However, this can be resolved by replacing aging irrigation infrastructure with today’s cloud-based Smart Water Management. It will not only save billions of gallons of water a year, but save thousands of dollars on the water bill in these serious times of drought.
Today’s weather-based Smart irrigation technology is much more water-wise than aging irrigation systems built 10-15 years ago. That’s because Smart controllers can monitor the weather, current soil conditions, evaporation, and plant use to determine when and how much water is needed, based on real-time conditions of the site.
Antiquated irrigation systems are pre-set manually to water on a regular schedule, and rarely adjusted to deliver the correct amount of water based on current landscape conditions or weather. This results in overwatering, which causes costly damage to landscape, hardscape, foundations, and slope erosion from excess water runoff.
Serious, ongoing drought conditions and rising water bills was only exacerbated for Adobe Creek Homeowners Association (HOA) in Petaluma, California by an aging, inefficient irrigation system. Water costs for 190,000 square feet of landscape for 320 homes had become the HOA’s third largest expense, and it was draining their budget. They needed a system that could deliver just the right amount of water for optimum plant health, reduce water use, and provide real-time visibility to track water usage. Smart Water Management provided the solution with the cloud-based technology of WeatherTRAK Smart controllers. It ended up saving the HOA up to 30% of their water usage year after year. Additionally, the HOA was able to save annual water costs of $44,000.
From cloud-based to soil-based, today’s data-enabled Smart Irrigation systems and controllers can also calculate rainfall, measure soil moisture deep in the root zone to within ± 3 percent of the actual volumetric soil moisture content, and electronically transmit that data to the Smart Controller, telling it how much water is needed.
Several research studies have shown water savings from 40% to as high as 70% in irrigation with this cutting-edge technology. If that’s not enough, Smart Water Management can also send text alerts of leaks and pipe breaks in real time, so the problem can be fixed immediately before costly damage to the system is done, and thousands of dollars are lost in water expenses.
Besides saving billions of gallons of water a year and thousands of dollars on the water bill each year, cities and parks have also been able to meet the 25% mandatory cutback of water use in California with Smart Water Management. All accomplished by replacing antiquated irrigation infrastructures with today’s cloud-based, weather-based Smart Irrigation technology.