Tennessee Landscape Team Finds the Irrigation “perfect fit” for HOAs
Background
Located in Gallatin, Tennessee, Puryear Farms Landscape Services has been offering design/build landscaping services to residential and commercial clients including turf health management, plant installation, property maintenance services, irrigation, and more. Ross Heinen, Operations Manager, is responsible for installation, maintenance, and technical support in the field of irrigation.
Among those served by Puryear Farms are an existing HOA site, the Villages of Fairvue Plantation, comprised of 114 houses, and Durham Farms, a new HOA site currently under construction, comprised of condos with grass and small common areas.
Challenge
Though Ross Heinen has had extensive experience for 13 years with various other irrigation controller manufacturers, including conventional and 2-wire, he could never find the perfect fit for Puryear Farm’s most common customer — the HOA.
“There were always central control communication errors, and using dial-up internet,” Heinen says. “And always bunches of additional sensors or extra parts we had to install and maintain.”
Eventually, Heinen’s job had become reactive. Fixing issues that resulted from control communication errors, such as burnt lawns, instead of the ease of maintaining verdant landscaping with reliable, weather-based automated irrigation controllers.
“Many of the HOA sites we manage are far away, which made it even more difficult,” Heinen points out. “Since they’re not in our area, it was a challenge to stop by daily to check in on things.”
What Heinen needed was an all-in-one type product, with nothing additional to manage, everything automatic.
Solution
That all-in-one, automatic product was introduced to him by Andy Clarkson and Todd Dovel with Smith Turf & Irrigation, a local distributor. It was WeatherTRAK. Offering cell-based communication and delivering the power of cloud-based smart irrigation. Which meant no more estimating how much water to use for HOA landscaping, both near and far away.
“Best of all, the WeatherTRAK system is automatic!” says Heinen. “When plants need water, WeatherTRAK will irrigate. And not having to deal manually with WiFi technology or deal with residents when issues arise is wonderful.”
The first installation of WeatherTRAK was a retro-fit for the Villages of Fairvue Plantation HOA site, which was being irrigated by an outdated controller not equipped for the complex setup of 351 zones.
“Controllers kept burning out, which required constant manual programming for running different zones,” Heinen explains. With two different water mainlines and a pump station, he went with WeatherTRAK Optiflow XR, since it has advanced flow management capabilities.
Installation was straightforward, no extra parts or additional sensors to install and figure out. Most of all, Heinen loves the remote alerts and remote access by cell phone to fix any issues.
“Now we don’t have to walk a quarter-mile to and from each controller to fix any issues,” Heinen points out. “And I love the reports! If residents are wondering if or when the system is watering, all I have to do is just pull up any report to show them.”
CHALLENGE
A second installation was done at the new construction site, Durham Farms HOA. With construction of condos currently on- going and the location of the site not easily accessible, being alerted of any irrigation issues was critical.
SOLUTION
The remote capabilities of WeatherTRAK ET Pro3 2-wire are what sold the system on this particular HOA site.
“With construction on-going, we needed to be alerted of any issues, like something might get unplugged, or a valve is destroyed,” Heinen says. “Now we receive an immediate alert, and someone is remotely able to fix the issue. Not having to visit the site to fix the issue is a huge benefit. Not only that, but plants at the site are looking very healthy now, which boosts curb appeal for this new housing project.”
Irrigation schedules automatically controlled by WeatherTRAK’s accurate, high resolution daily weather updates has proven to be the perfect fit at last for HOA sites both near and far away.
“WeatherTRAK is all-in-one, everything automatic. And customer support has been great at HydroPoint Technical Support,” says Heinen. “Best of all, no irrigation when it’s raining anymore! We were wasting so much water, but not anymore.”
Which also fits perfectly with the Mission & Core Values of Puryear Farms.
“We pride ourselves on being forward thinking and stewardships of the land,” says founder, John Puryear. “It is our duty to leave the world around us a better place than when we entered it. Landscaping is a calling through which we help to achieve that objective.”