Streamlined Irrigation and Flow Monitoring Empowers Landscape Team and Saves Carson City School District $20,000
“We’re all extremely impressed and happy with the results that we’ve received in such a short time frame…it was very gratifying to see that we are already bringing in a return on investment. The leak was under our nose for 5-6 years and could’ve been even longer than that.”
— Director of Operations, Carson City School District
The Customer and the Challenge
When the Carson City School District in Nevada brought on a new Director of Operations, he saw opportunities for process improvement to cut labor costs and eradicate inefficiencies within the grounds department.
The irrigation systems the 10+ campuses relied on at the time were outdated and manual. Systems would turn on during rainstorms and the landscape team would have to venture to campus during off hours to shut them off, eating into their already busy days.
The Solution
The Director of Operations saw the time and labor savings that would be possible with a streamlined irrigation system and flow monitoring platform with remote management capabilities.
The school district reached out to HydroPoint to inquire about using WeatherTRAK smart irrigation and flow monitoring on their campuses. The HydroPoint team’s assessment of the current state of Carson’s irrigation even further how outdated the previous systems were and uncovered other issues like old piping, soft soil from water overflow, and rain sensors mounted in places where they wouldn’t be functional.
Right off the bat, the school district experienced how helpful, communicative, and proactive the HydroPoint team was in assessing the needs and goals of the school district.
We went from the Stone Ages to state-of-the-art technology that supports us and makes our lives easier, while still ensuring our campuses are beautiful.
Director of Operations, Carson City School District
The HydroPoint team deployed 21 WeatherTRAK controllers across six of Carson City School District’s campuses. The director and his team were immediately impressed with the WeatherTRAK mobile app and the wide range of trainings and resources available, the real-time alerts of any issues, and the easy remote management capabilities.
The app allows the landscape team to shut off their on-campus controllers with the quick touch of a button from the comfort of their own home, instead of having to cut into their off time to drive out to campus and adjust controllers manually.
The Big Win
Carson City’s high school is the biggest campus and the face of the school district. As the host of many activities and sporting events, the high school has seen the most dramatic benefits of having streamlined, modern irrigation and flow monitoring technology.
My grounds team is inspired and motivated now, because they feel like they’re going into battle with the most high-tech systems to make their lives easier. They feel like they’re winning. And it’s not just the system, it’s the people. My team feels supported and empowered by WeatherTRAK and the whole team that’s behind it.
Director of Operations, Carson City School District
One spring, while the school was gearing up for a fundraising event, they realized that the grounds near their athletic fields were soggier than they should be. They assumed there must have been water leaking somewhere but couldn’t locate the source of it.
This continued unresolved, until establishing WeatherTRAK on the campus. Almost instantaneously, the system’s flow monitoring discovered that the school was losing 16,000 gallons of water daily, somewhere on the campus.Further investigation from the HydroPoint team and the school district landscape team discovered that the leak was caused by a damaged drain – and that it had been silently wreaking havoc for almost six years. The landscape team resolved the leak, eliminating further water waste, saving the school district nearly $20,000 on their annual water bill, and empowering his landscape team.