Smart Irrigation saves you money...

The Lawn Psychologist loves irrigation.   Irrigation comes in many shapes and sizes, from a sprinkler at the end of a hose,  harvesting rainwater in rain barrels, drip irrigation to fully automatic irrigation system installed by professionals... or in some brave cases, home owners.  I would always recommend having a professional install your irrigation system.

If you are serious about your landscape then you simply must have an automatic irrigation system.  It seems a pity to spend so much time and money on your landscape, only to have it wither and die when you take the family on vacation for 2 weeks in the summertime.   :)

It's not cheap to irrigate your house.   One would be wise to "be smart" when designing an irrigation system so that it works to maximum efficiency.   This means saving money in the long run...

I live in Washington State which generally stays in the 70's to 80's during the summer months.


Here are just a few ways to maximize irrigation efficiency.

Zone it up!   Inspect your yard.   Where are the shrub beds, where are the lawn beds.  Lawn requires more water than shrubs, so you don't want to put shrub beds and lawn on the same zone because either your shrubs will be getting too much water or your grass will not be getting enough.  Typical pop up time for a (sunny lawn zone is 10 to 12 minutes and sunny shrub zones run for about 5 to 7 minutes during the summer months)

Shade zones Vs.  Sun zones:  Now look at the different areas of your yard and how the sun hits them throughout the summer months.  If you have a large tree in your back yard that shades the back from mid day sun, this is a shade zone.  One should separate shade from sun because areas that have shade during the afternoon simply don't need as much water as an area that receives direct sunlight all day long.  This results is efficient watering!

Adding a rain/wind sensor:  A rain sensor will automatically turn off the irrigation system when it rains resulting in saving precious water that would otherwise be uselessly wasted.   The wind sensor will turn off the irrigation system if it's too windy for the irrigation system to efficiently water because the water will be blown away by the wind.  They have both hard wired and wireless sensors available.

Smart Controllers:  These controllers collect data from satellites and the internet and adjust your irrigation system according to what the weather is doing day by day.  This is a very "basic" explanation of what a smart controller does.  I plan on doing an entire blog on smart controllers because of how unbelievable they are!

You could easily shave off 25 minutes of total watering time by just separating shade zones from sun zones alone!  An average irrigation system is distributing about 15 gallons a minute of water.  That's 375 gallons for one cycle!  If your watering every day for 3 months out of the year, that's almost 17,000 gallons of water!  That equates to saving our most precious resource and saving you money at the same time!

Please contact us to provide you a quote for a 100% efficient irrigation system!

Thanks for reading the blog!

Derrik Tribble
The Lawn Psychologist