Let us take a step back in time… the year is 2005. The U.S. economy is churning away at a break neck pace. The Wall Street financial collapse had never crossed anyone’s mind. Consumers had lots of disposable income and were buying all sorts of products large and small, including lots and lots of sprinkler systems. Demand was high, supply was low… Rainbird could charge a premium for their lawn sprinkler heads and nobody would bat an eyebrow.

Now add to the mix Hurricane Katrina and the devastation to all the oil drilling platforms and oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. Gasoline prices shot thru the roof and approached $5.00 per gallon. It seemed like the cost of everything was hyper-inflating, including the cost of sprinkler parts. You may or may not know this but the bulk of sprinkler parts are made from plastics(polyvinylchloride, polybutylene, etc…) which happen to be manufactured from petroleum byproducts. Do you see where we are going with this? That’s right, there is a direct correlation between the cost of our sprinkler parts and the cost of oil. 

Scroll forward to today and it’s a totally different world my friends. The price of gasoline has stabilized to well under $3.00 per gallon. Gone is the consumer with an endless supply of disposable income. The supply of sprinkler parts is high, the demand for sprinkler systems is low. New homes construction is down. The cost of everything has bottomed out. It truly is a buyers market. Homes, automobiles, and yes , even automatic lawn sprinkler systems, all are at rock bottom prices.

So if you’re in the market for an automatic lawn sprinkler system and think that you cannot afford it, think again, you may be pleasantly surprised! Call EcoLawn Sprinkler System of Springfield Va. today and get the lush, green lawn and landscape you deserve!

Over the past number of years, this country has experienced many droughts. In fact, if you looked at a map of thr United States in 2007, it showed 23 states that were experiencing droughts or were on the verge. It’s a challenging game we’re faced with, trying to curtail our use of water while still trying to enjoy the benefits that it brings. However, it’s up to everyone to help do their part, and many organizations are.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) started it’s nationwide WaterSense Program in an effort to help educate consumers to choose water-efficient products. Products stamped with WaterSense’s approval help users reduce their amount of water usage by up to 15% each day.

To further help the cause, Some municipal water districts are offering special rebates which will practically pay for water efficient products either in new installations or to retrofit an existing sprinkler system. Nevada is also offering incentives, allowing builders and contractors who are working on properties that follow Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design(LEED) Standards to purchase construction materials tax free. Other states like Michigan are following similar methods. Meanwhile, some localities are fining homeowners wh fail to adhere to water limits.

With national, regional and local efforts increasingly focused on conservation, one can’t help but ask, “What can the irrigation industry do to help?”

“We’re seeing an overall trend right now of increased awareness about the need to use products that reduce water waste by increasing irrigation efficiency”, says Mike Baron, director of water management at the Toro Company, Irrigation Division, Riverside California. “With the cost of water going up and the increased implementation of tiered rate pricing, there’s a greater interest on the part of the property owners to make those investments to reduce their water costs”. This has been a prevailing sentiment for irrigation manufacturers for a number of years. smart controllers and moisture sensors have become hot items, allowing property owners to irrigate their landscape only when necessary. But there’s more to water efficiency than merely using moisture sensors and ET controllers and operating the system less. If you’re thinking seriously of how you can help your clients cut the amount of water used in their irrigation systems, then you will want to take a step back and really look at how the water is being applied. And where else would you look to get a glimpse of this besides the sprinklers? They are one of the most crucial components in an irrigation system. Apoorly set sprinkler, incorrectly nozzled, can tarnish the water distribution for an entire watering area, wasting countless gallons of water during each irrigation cycle.

Thanks to advances in technology in the last several years, sprinklers have become far more water efficient. Companies such as Rainbird, Hunter, Toro, K-Rain and others have introduced new and improved sprinkler heads, and innovations continue to be made.

“We’ve had 60 years of history where the efficiency of spray systems has been 50% or less efficient because the basic spray technology was limited”, says Jeff Miller, product manager for the Toro Company. “The majority of spray systems in the groung are not very efficient. But that’s all starting to change.”

Wasting Water- Let’s first talk about a common misconception which occurs when jurisdictions suddenly impose water restrictions on it’s residents. This often happens in the summer during a drought when the water supply is constrained. As a result of the water shortage, homeowners might be required to water their properties only one or two days a week. The idea is that this will help conserve water. What these jurisdictions fail to take into account, though, is how homeowners will water these one or two days when they are allowed.

“In areas where they are dictating when to water, Homeowners will set their controllers so they’ll completely douse that area with water”, says Don Mann, sales manager for Rainbird, Tuscon, Arizona.
“That’s not necessarily being water efficient. They’re trying to conserve, and they end up wasting”.

Where most irrigation systems go wrong is a lack of matched precipitation between all of it’s sprinklers. What we mean by “matched precipitation” in the irrigation business is that all of the areas being watered by a zone of sprinklers receives the same rate of water. This rate is what is referred to as the application rate or precipitation rate. When that rate is equal at every location in the watering zone, then matched precipitation is achieved.

A common mistake installers make is when they install a system comprised of nozzles that don’t work together to deliver a matched precipitation rate. This is especially common when installing rotors that don’t have similar arcs. For example, you might find a zone that has one 360 degree rotary sprinkler releasing water at two gallons a minute, and another 90 degree nozzle that’s also releasing water at eight gallons per minute….tbc

 On a parallel note, the April 2010 Scientific American Magazine includes a special report entitled “Managing Earth’s Future, Solutions for a Finite World”, which also includes discussions on the need for boundaries for freshwater use.

70% of all freshwater use by humans is consumed in agricutural irrigation. Urban landscape irrigation is an extention of this freshwater use. Both periodicals emphasize the importance of new technology in the use of irrigation. Micro sprinklers, soil moisture sensors, and other water conservation devices are all mentioned. These topics hit home because EcoLawn can provide clients with water saving tools incorporated into their home sprinkler systems.

Few rational observers deny the need for boundaries to freshwater use. More controversial is defining where these limits are or what steps to take to constrain ourselves within them.

Another way to describe these boundaries is the concept of peak water. Three different ideas are useful. “Peak Renewable” water  limits are the total renewable flows in a watershed. Many of the world’s  major rivers are already approaching this threshold-when evaporation and consumption surpass natural replenishment from precipitation and other sources. “Peak Nonrenewable” limits apply where human use of water far exceeds natural recharge rates, such as in fossil groundwater basins of the Great Plains, Libya, Northern China, India, and parts of California’s Central Valley. In these basins, an increase in extraction is followed by a leveling off and then a reduction, as the costs and amount of effort needed to acquire the dwindling resource rise- a concept similar to that of peak oil.

“Peak Ecological” water is the idea that for any hydrological system, increasing withdrawals eventually reach the point where any additional economic benefit of taking the water is outweighed by the additional ecological destruction that causes. Although it is difficult to quantify this point accurately, we have clearly passed the point of peak ecological water in many basins around the world where huge damage has occurred including the Aral Sea, the Everglades, the Sacramento-San Joquin Valley and many watersheds in China.

The good news is that the potential for savings, without hurting human health or economic productivity, is vast. Improvements in water-use efficiency are possible in every sector. More food can be grown with less water(and less water contamination) by shifting from conventional flood irrigation to drip irrigation and micro sprinklers, along with more accurately monitoring and managing soil moisture.

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     A new type of lawn and landscape irrigation sprinkler, a multi-stream, multi-trajectory rotating(MSMTR) sprinkler, appears to offer improved distribution uniformity compared to fixed spray heads and rotors in sprinkler systems for lawn and landscape irrigation. Improved uniformity could mean higher irrigation efficiency, and potential water conservation.

     Kissinger and Solomon(2008) supported that anecdotal evidence with an analysis of 13 zones on a standard lawn and landscape irrigation system. They found that replacing fixed spray heads and rotors with MSMTR sprinklers(making no other changes) improved distribution uniformity(DU) by an average of 27 points, resulting in water savings of from 22% to 41% depending on pre-conversion irrigation management practice.

     Fixed spray heads and rotors, frequently used in lawn and landscape sprinkler systems, produce a static or rotating spray, distributing water over their entire arc of coverage. These may be installed on risers or in “pop-up” heads, which rise when the water turns on.

     Multi-stream, multi-trajectory rotating(MSMTR) sprinklers distribute water in a number of individual streams, of varying trajectories, which turn slowly. These sprinklers are the size of spray nozzles and thread onto pop-up heads just as spray nozzles do. They can also be threaded onto shrub adapters for installation onto risers.

     To investigate the water conservation potential of MSMTR sprinklers due to improved uniformity, audits were conducted on a variety of existing lawn and landscape irrigation systems employing fixed spray heads and rotors. The audits were conducted according to the protocol recommended by the Irrigation Association. The lawn and landscape sprinkler systems were first inspected and any obvious deficiencies(such as missing nozzles, broken pipes, leaking fittings) were corrected. A catch-can test was performed to determine the uniformity achieved by the fixed spray heads and rotors. Then the irrigaton systems were converted to the MSMTR sprinklers and a second catch-can test was conducted. A total of 51 audits were conducted.

     For 37 of the zones audited, the head location, spacing and other operating conditions were the same during each pair of catch can tests, except for the sprinklers used. In 14 zones, based on the improved coverage of the MSMTR sprinklers, some of the pre-existing spray head locations were eliminated; fewer MSMTR were used to cover the same area previously irrigated by a greater number of spray heads. In 7 of the 14 zones, the reduced number of head positions required some adjustment in the location of the remaining positions. In no case was the spatial density of head locations increased for MSMTR sprinklers.

     Results for the 51 zones audited were collected and analyized. In general, the uniformity of the existing lawn sprinkler systems using traditional fixed spray heads and rotors was not good. Overall, the MSMTR sprinklers achieved higher uniformity than the fixed spray heads and rotors. An irrigation manager’s response to dry spots and turf areas of poor visual quality should be to make changes that result in higher uniformity, rather than to increase lawn and landscape sprinkler system run times. Higher uniformity will enhance water conservation and reduce deficits as well. An irrigation manager may respond to dry spots and turf areas of poor visual quality by increasing lawn and landscape sprinkler system run times. However, setting run times at a higher rate on lawn and landscape sprinkler systems requires that considerably more water be applied, thus water conservation decreases.

     The recommended approach when encountering poor uniformity is to make the changes necessary to eliminate the uniformity problems, not to increase run times of the sprinkler system in an attempt to reduce or eliminate dry spots. Reducing deficits by increasing run times requires considerable extra water, but reducing deficits by improving uniformity actually achieves significant water conservation. If you have a uniformity problem, fix it-don’t drown it. EcoLawn Sprinkler System has installed many of the new MSMTR irrigation systems. Please call EcoLawn Sprinkler System today so that you may understand the water savings these new lawn sprinkler systems achieve.