A Few Thoughts on Water Conservation

I do not claim to be fount of all knowledge on irrigation, but I can recommend a few things one can do to be more efficient in the use of their irrigation water in the landscape.  I love lawns and so I am not inclined to always jump at the idea of removing turf from the family landscape.  Actually, I would be looking for ways to keep my lawn and landscape healthy with the proper amount of water at the proper interval to encourage deep irrigation and deep healthy roots.

Three areas come to mind and one of them is planting the correct plant material for the right soil, exposure, climate, etc.  Beyond that, I think one would be very wise to look into “smart clocks” (irrigation controllers) and more precision delivery from the newer emitters.  You can make your controllers “smarter” with these new clocks that take into account the soil texture, zip code, daily temperature, rainfall, slope, plant material and so on.  The addition of a local mini weather station, or internet-based weather input, will allow the amount of time needed to run each valve to be adjusted up or down during each cycle.  This will go a long way to increase efficiency over the common method of turning the clock on in March and turning it off in late October with no regard as to the actual needs of the plants.

Finally, there is the choice of irrigation emitters themselves.  There are nozzles like the “MP Rotators” and “PrecisionSeries Nozzles” that are much more efficient in both their uniformity of coverage and the rate of delivery.  With a larger droplet size and slower rate of delivery one can greatly increase the uniformity and significantly reduce the chance of runoff.  

Check with your local irrigation supply house and see what advances have been made in the past few years.  They will pay for themselves in your water bill, your plant’s health, and conserve water.  It’s the smart thing to do.