The extreme drought that has been devastating many parts of the United States has impacted water restrictions as well as contributed to rising water costs, forcing many to step away from using municipal water and transition into using alternate sources. When water is scarce, it gets:
- Expensive – municipal water rates go up. Suddenly keeping the landscape healthy gets more expensive every year.
- Regulated – the water purveyor says when, how, and where property owners can irrigate. Millions of Americans have been affected by the recent mass implementation of water restrictions and outdoor irrigation bans. When water is restricted, maintaining a healthy landscape becomes more difficult.
Use water available on the project site, such as lakes, ponds, retention ponds, streams, irrigation ditches, and cisterns/tanks, to protect your customers against rising municipal water costs and restrictions.
What are the benefits of using site-sourced water?
1. Help your customer save on water costs $$$ – without having to rely on municipal water, your customers could save money each year utilizing onsite water sources. Savings depend on size of the project and regional climate but can reach hundreds of dollars or more.
2. Enhance your proposal with lower operating costs – quoting a system that requires lower operating costs will give you an advantage over the competition, and can often lead to more jobs won. Property owners hate high water bills and may even stop using their system if the costs become too overbearing.
3. Typically, no restrictions on when water is available for use, what can be watered, and how much – using the water onsite efficiently will keep the landscape green, healthy, and attractive – often essential for maintaining businesses and property values.
4. Become a valuable resource by offering water smart pump solutions – offering site-sourced water will help position you as an indispensable asset to your client, helping them to navigate through a growing water crisis.
5. Achieve healthy, lush landscapes even in dry periods – utilizing onsite water allows you to maintain the landscape your customer desires, even in the midst of a drought.
6. Avoid plant loss due to water restrictions – when water restrictions are in place, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain plant life. Onsite water sources help to avoid plant loss, which in turn helps to eliminate replacement costs.
Improving Water Efficiencies
No matter the water source, there are many products that can make your system more efficient:
- Pressure regulating sprays and rotors. All sprays and most rotors can be retrofitted with pressure regulating version. In fact, some states and local municipalities are only allowing the sale of pressure regulating sprays and rotors.
- Retrofit landscape areas with drip where possible, always pressure compensating drip with a pressure regulator in the zone control kit.
- Swap existing controllers with smart controllers – any controller that can change runtimes based on weather conditions. Hydrawise does an excellent job with their smart controllers, with an option available for residential and light commercial projects. All leading manufactures offer smart controllers including Rain Bird, Irritrol, Baseline, etc.
- Rain, moisture and flow sensors. All controllers work with rain sensors and all work with moisture sensors as a simple on/off device. Most controllers work with flow sensors to stop flow for breaks. Baseline sensors do a great job of moisture control and integrate with Munro.
- Master valves for controllers that can work with flow sensors to stop flow for breaks. Without a master valve, or pump start relay, the water source will keep pumping water through a mainline break.
Finally
At Central Turf, we are experienced in commercial design and projects. Ask us your toughest questions; we are here to assist and help make you more efficient, competitive, and profitable in your commercial work. Ready to implement site-sourced water on your projects? We can help with pumps, pump controls and complete pump stations from the industry’s leading brand for irrigation, Munro.
To get started, call or email the Central Pump Hotline at 1-844-PUMP-101, pumps@centraltis.com or visit your local branch.