Housing boom gone bust has left a wake of water system failures, new reforms.
Money was easy to borrow, and, at the same time, droughts were front-page stories. For two decades–plus, millions of single-family, cluster, and town homes were being put up, with nice lawns to maintain. Along the way, irrigation systems became a must-have option. Like electric garage door openers, everyone had to have automatic sprinklers with the new home, as standard.
To feed the demand, new “smart” data-encoded irrigation control products issued forth, evolved quickly, and were added onto developers’ plans.
And during this time, few, if any, codes and standards were issued by regulatory bodies; nothing adequate to assure quality or standardization in rapidly growing practices of landscape irrigation design, installation, operation, or technology.
The result?
From his vantage in the field—encountering landscape systems almost daily—Timothy Malooly, an EPA WaterSense Partner and president of Irrigation Consultants & Control Inc. (Plymouth, MN), observes that, “Thousands of irrigation systems that have been installed in the last 10 years … are performing very poorly.”
Problems are perhaps most evident among newer home projects, he finds. Here, housing developers, “not surprisingly, count on vendor-installers to practice proper designs and installation techniques,” he says.
Unfortunately, irrigation businesses have not always met these expectations. Meanwhile, as irrigation technologies were proliferating and rapidly evolving, the pace of growth made it difficult for some practitioners—many newly arriving with the boom—to keep up.
“Little or no licensure of installers” existed, nor training of end-users “on proper irrigation scheduling or maintenance practice,” observes Malooly.
Malooly serves on the boards of the Irrigation Association (IA) and the Minnesota Nursery and Landscape Association, and chairs IA’s national Ambassador program to promote best practices. He adds that disappointing outcomes were almost inevitable.
Irrigation deficiencies may not appear right away or, when they do, manifest themselves ambiguously, with excessively wet or inexplicably dry areas. Perhaps belatedly, after the developers have sold the homes and an owners’ association has taken over the property, the magnitude of problems becomes apparent.
Complicating matters is the likelihood that residential system owners’ “lack of knowledge or proper instruction in the first place generally leads to misuse,” such as over-watering to compensate, or to seeking help from “service vendors unprepared or uninterested in addressing root causes,” says Malooly.
In hindsight, formal education, licensure, and other prudent measures should have been required to help assure correct design, installation, and operation, he adds, noting that he now consults with several community associations to help them with “irrigation augmentation.”
Somehow lost in all of this is the fact that the technology, itself, is basically good at achieving desired outcomes. “Properly designed, installed, and operated irrigation systems are incredibly valuable tools,” says Malooly.
Smart timers introduced this decade, generally, “eliminate the guesswork about proper watering, and help ensure efficient use of water when the system operates,” says Malooly.”
One indicator of timer popularity as of 2008, HydroPoint—a major manufacturer—announced record sales, despite the construction slump. Revenues soared more than 70% in one year, and the company’s weather data subscriber base grew to 105%, with it now exceeding 16,000.
HydroPoint’s Web site gives a good description of the smart timer’s essential concept. First, “Customers fill out a questionnaire about their grounds—slope, sprinkler placement, sun exposure, type of landscaping, etc.”
Next, the vendor devises “a watering strategy and places one or more … controllers on the grounds … gathers weather data from satellites and automatically feeds it to the controllers, which adjust watering patterns to suit evaporation rates and the weather,” states a description for HydroPoint Data Systems’ WeatherTrak product.
Weather information takes one of two forms, explains Joe Berg, water use efficiency programs manager for the Municipal Water District of Orange County, CA (www.mwdoc.com). One is historical weather data embedded in the timer, “but also modified with a single sensor,” he says.
Some use temperature gauges, others solar. Either way, the sensors, in conjunction with the stored local climate data, decide how often to water vegetation on a routine and when, and whether to alter this schedule.
The second type uses real-time technology that communicates with a weather station, either directly or indirectly, he says.
Berg’s office in Orange County has been aggressively supporting both kinds of weather-responsive controllers since the days when HydroPoint’s product first appeared. For the past several years, he and colleagues have been investigating the effectiveness of multiple products systematically, tabulating real-world performance.
While smart timers typically control home lawn sprinklers, other sensors support high-end, computer-controlled ones. Included in this category, says Brian Vinchesi, president of Irrigation Consulting Inc. (Pepperell, MA), are “system interruption devices like rain sensors, freeze sensors, and flow sensors,” set to monitor conditions and to send/receive control signals via a link to the central control computer.
With the market boom occurring for all of these, costs have fallen to the point that affordability spurs still-surging use all the more. “A number of states, now mandate rain sensors,” notes Vinchesi.
Higher-end devices “know” how much water is flowing systemwide and will shunt, schedule, or adjust appropriately. “They sense something has broken,” and turn off all or part of a system, so you don’t waste the water, for example, says Vinchesi.
On the water-delivery end of the piping, increasingly, are multiple-stream, multiple-trajectory sprinklers. First introduced about five years ago, “They’re much more efficient” than earlier-generation designs, adds Vinchesi, who also chairs the important Smart Water Irrigation Technologies (SWAT) program at IA. “All the manufacturers are working hard on trying to put water down more uniformly, which results in higher efficiency.”
He advises: “Irrigators need to look at all the new products available that save water, as opposed to sticking with the ‘tried and true’ things that have been out there 30 or 40 years.”
Although the newer technologies “are not always the least expensive or easiest to implement, if you take the time to learn them, they will definitely save water,” adds Vinchesi.
Testing How Much Savings
Knowing this, many water professionals began realizing, mid-decade, that testing and standardization would be desirable; so, IA led the industry’s push to set protocols suitable to apply in eventual testing.
In 2007, the SWAT organization formed, which Vinchesi now chairs. Committee work has proceeded rapidly, he says. As of early 2009, about 15 smart controllers of assorted makes and types have been tested. Further examination of rain sensors and shutoffs, soil moisture sensors, and moisture sensors attached to controllers, is either in progress or pending.
Products are assigned a relative performance rank; this information, along with status reports and bulletins on tests, is posted at www.irrigation.org, notes Vinchesi. SWAT also distributes marketing materials promoting the technology, to make it better understood and to overcome consumer price resistance.
Already, SWAT product certifications are being used by a number of water utilities and authorities as a basis for offering rebates to consumers who invest in timers that SWAT has vetted, he says.
And last year, a consumer product-labeling program overseen by EPA’s WaterSense initiative (itself begun only in April 2008) starting indicating timers as “tested-and-approved.” Labeling began in September 2008. (See www.swatirrigation.org or www.irrigation.org for details.)
Eventually, future testing will be done by a chain of certified labs, says Vinchesi. But, for now, it’s largely concentrated at two sites: Rain sensors are put through their paces at the University of Florida, and all other items at the Center for Irrigation Technology (CIT), at California State University in Fresno.
CIT is “kind of the ‘UL’ of irrigation technology testing,” says its director, David Zoldoske, Ph.D., referring to Underwriters Laboratories Inc., the major standards-setting and product-testing center.
 |
Photo: Rain Bird Corp.
In February, the California Commission implemented water technology statutes requiring smart controllers to address the extreme drought crisis. |
He adds that, in California’s case, there’s certain urgency in all of this, in that, as of February 2009, the California Energy Commission was moving quickly to implement water technology statutes to address an extreme drought crisis. “They’ve been charged with putting into law [A.B. 1881] a mandate requiring that all controllers sold in California, starting in 2010 or 2011, have to be smart controllers,” says Zoldoske.
Computerized Central Control
For large irrigation systems, computer-driven technology has been available since the ‘70s, says Malooly, himself an early adopter. It not only uses weather data, but also saves labor and closely monitors watering operations. Some systems can automatically shut down or correct faulty components to save water and protect landscaping.
Usage has been growing for a decade or two, he notes. School districts, sports facilities, municipalities, and developers of master planned communities are increasingly aware that computerization saves water and time.
In his business, Malooly has developed a service that provides benefits without the necessity of the customer making the typically high up-front investment. Cost recovery for such “leased outcomes,” he says, can be “almost immediate,” as the operational expense works out to a small fraction of that needed for labor-intensive, conventionally controlled, large systems.
Ellen Beighley, president of Irrigation Management Systems Inc. (Portland, OR), offers clients a unique service in providing irrigation monitoring—without gaining financially from the eventual system upgrades. This provides her firm some independence and objectivity in its recommendations.
“We often assist clients in planning system upgrades to improve functionality and efficiency,” she says. “Our niche is to monitor.”
Cost justification concerning her recommendations comes up often in these discussion, and she finds that payback timeframes can often be remarkably rapid, sometimes in as little as one year, and rarely more than three. Rapidly increasing water rates, sometimes in double-digit percentages, create an ever-stronger incentive to economize.
Systems that had initially failed or required extensive repairs typically also improve remarkably in the resulting water efficiency gains, adds Beighley. Even if the system was not faulty and is only being given a technology upgrade, clients will typically see water savings from the added precision capabilities of newer controls, which minimize over-watering.
For a sense of the magnitude of water wastage due to urban irrigation problems, Chris Spain, chief strategy officer and cofounder of HydroPoint Data Systems, posts some numbers his www.weathertrak.com product Web site. To begin with, urban landscapes reportedly consume a staggering 58% of the community’s water, he asserts. Over-watering is pervasive, ranging in severity from 30–300%. It is not only wasteful to communities, he notes, but often lethal to vegetation.
“Eighty percent of all landscape assets are lost to over-watering,” says Spain. And, this wastage severely exacerbates widespread drought and shortage conditions.
Apart from losses of water and vegetation incurred, lots of energy is needlessly expended, by continuing to operate outdated watering systems. Among HydroPoint users alone, Spain’s firm estimates that his users will save themselves and their communities a cumulative 45,000,000 kWh on power costs this year, thanks to the effectiveness of top-end efficiency measures.
Remedies, Solutions
Now back to the broader public problems, which Malooly described above.
Fixing faulty or antiquated systems hinges mainly, all agree, on improving education—spanning everything from in-depth product knowledge to system design, proper installation, and competent operation.
Secondly, eventually and inevitably, codes and other regulatory standards will be implemented. In the interim, the one-stop source of best industry practices is undoubtedly the IA Web site (www.irrigation.org), where a 50-page comprehensive download is available.
Vinchesi suggests that any community could actually adopt IA’s boilerplate recommendations as their own and apply this as a code. He and others also promote IA’s exam-based certifications, covering design, installation, and management.
Also—adds Glenn Bowlin, irrigation manager at Broussard Associates (Clovis, CA)—when bids are sought on new irrigation jobs, the formula phrase awarding contracts to the “lowest qualified bidder” could be strengthened and better defined by specifying that bidders should possess appropriate IA certification for their field. Bowlin strongly recommends that vendors avail themselves, too, of the classes and seminars of the American Society of Irrigation Consultants. Finally, he sees a need to raise consciousness regarding contractor follow-through in actually installing the equipment that a designer calls for, rather than allowing the “or equal” cheap alternative to be acceptable (as is common in contracting).
Bowlin has a keen interest in the water hardware from a retrospective standpoint too: He chairs the IA’s history committee, which oversees an irrigation museum (www.irrigationmuseum.org) housing more than 1,000 artifacts; none is recommended for use today, of course, but the look back at the past can be entertaining and informative, he says.
Malooly, in response to some who assert that irrigation systems are wasteful extravagances, offers the idea of showcasing model irrigation success cases. These could serve as venues for demonstrating how well a properly installed system does work, and how it should be operated. Developers, contractors, homeowner associations, government agencies, and the community at large could be invited to tour and learn, he suggests.
It’s also critical, he adds, for the irrigation industry to network better and welcome education and certification programs. “A good irrigation infrastructure, can be nearly as complicated,” he says, “… as providing drinking water or sewer services … involving a complex network of pipe, wiring, sprinklers, and controls … and know-how is required every step of the way.”
A well-designed “water wise” project can win recognition and draw strong community support. Successfully communicating this early in a project’s design phase will help enable better and more efficient integration of water efficient outcomes. Proper planning and design can lead to innovative water use strategies, including stormwater reuse, rainwater harvesting, cisterns, ponds, and lakes as amenities.
Beighley finds a good solution to technology problems in sticking with what is the best computer-centralization product. “The oldest program is still the best,” she says. Besides being the one that she knows well, it has a longer record in the field, has benefited from continuous upgrades and improvements by the manufacturer, and sports many more bells and whistles than competitors. The best system provides “more information for analysis … the most control over amounts of water … and it pinpoints problems” better than the other brands, she says.
On a final note, in California’s Central Valley, the urgency of all this landscape water technology was brought home dramatically in late February, as the US Bureau of Reclamation announced its intention to cut off water supplies to thousands of California farms, at least temporarily.
This drastic step was necessitated by dwindling water stocks in the area’s nearly half-empty reservoirs—all victims of a severe shortage of rain. What little water remains in them must be diverted to cities, just to assure minimum health and safety.
Zoldoske, who lives in the heart of California’s farm belt, reports from there that, already, “We’ve got huge acreage of agriculture going out of production due to drought.”
But cities are truly struggling too. “The Bay area is very near to declaring a state of emergency,” he says.
By the time this article appears, a combination of mandatory and voluntary rationing will likely be in place in much of the state.
“We’re moving very rapidly to a train wreck,” laments Zoldoske, newly returning from meetings with staff of the California Energy Commission, which are now empowered to regulate water as well energy and to impose needed restrictions.
He sighs and says, “It’s just unbelievable.”
Irrigation efficiency anyone?