This past Summer a landscaper ask me to look at a sprinkler system at a Minneapolis residence. His customer was concerned about the environment and conserving water. Each time she looked at her water bill she was concerned at how much water her household was consuming. Over the course of one Summer, the sprinkler system was using 170,000 gallons of water. While that is a large amount of water it isn’t unusual for a sprinkler system. My goal was to decrease her water consumption and maintain the same beautiful landscape.
Here are the water saving methods I recommended.
- Replace the sprinkler system controller. In the last few years there have been some innovative new controllers coming to the market. Old controllers should be replaced with these new weather based controllers. The new Weathermatic and Hunter Solar Sync adjust sprinkler run times based on the weather. The controllers take in a number of factors, warmth, precipitation, wind speed, time of year and type of sprinkler system. This allows for a very tuned system that allows the sprinkler system to only put down as much water as is needed.
- Replace traditional spray head with Hunter MP Rotators. This is a new product can be retrofitted in existing spray heads. It can save 30% more water than traditional spray heads. The MP Rotators, create multiple streams of water that rotate, this means larger water droplets, no more mist, less wind drift, less evaporation, and less runoff. This is an easy retrofit and one I recommend.
- Replace flower and vegetable gardens spray heads to Hunter drip tubing. Drip tubing have emitters ever 12″ to 18″ and slowly drip to saturate the ground at the root of the plant. Water is put only where it is needed, eliminating evaporation and water waste.
Payoff:
This customer in this example saw water savings of 60% from the Summer of 2009 to 2010. This saved 120,000 gallons of water, this saved a valuable resource and money for our customer. 120,000 gallons equaled a savings of $500 dollars for this Minneapolis residence.
The devices pay for themselves at different rates. Your quickest payoff is from the controller which usually pays for itself in one to two years. Replacing spray nozzles with MP Rotators and drip tubing, usually sees a payback in four to five years.