SYSTEM COMPARISONS: Smart Upgrades

Tom Campbell’s irrigation consulting business isn’t called Water Scout for nothing.
   
A 25-year veteran of the landscape and irrigation industries in Marin and Sonoma County, Calif., Campbell conducts irrigation audits as a means of reconnaissance before outlining a plan of attack to upgrade clients’ faulty systems.
 
Before retrofitting a system, Campbell first conducts a zone-by-zone assessment of the existing system. He flags broken heads and repairs these immediately so he can accurately measure the system (in gallons per minute) before he makes any extensive upgrades.

After the project is complete Campbell takes another reading to measure the savings. It’s not uncommon for the systems to improve so much so that zones that were once running at up to 45 gallons per minute now operate in the high 20-gallons-per-minute range.
 
In addition to conserving water, Campbell is saving his clients money – as much as 50 percent off of their water bills – which is an increasingly attractive offer as many water districts migrate to tiered water rate structures.
 
Here’s a look at two of Campbell’s past renovations.

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY UPGRADE
Autodesk headquarters
San Rafael, Calif.

Site specifics: The 42-zone area is located on clay and amended clay/loam soil. The property is a mix of turf, planted areas, trees and parking-lot islands. Runoff and overwatering were concerns.

OUTDATED SYSTEM: Broken heads, leaking valves and various other inefficiencies afflicted the 15-year old system, which was a top-notch system when it was originally installed. However, maintenance had gone awry. “The site was pretty much bleeding out,” Campbell says. “There were a lot of issues – broken heads, leakages and the master valve was offline because of a cut wire.” Existing components included:

• Controller – three controllers operated this system, creating programming and scheduling challenges. Every time one controller’s battery died, the system would go into default, watering every day for 10 minutes. “There were conventional controllers that had enough capacity to handle all of the zones,” Campbell says. “I have no idea why someone slapped in three controllers.”
• Turf area, planted areas and trees – traditional stream sprayheads, many of which were broken.
• Parking-lot island – pop-up sprinklers, broken and fixed in upright position causing a tripping hazard.

SMART UPGRADE: After a zone-by-zone evaluation Campbell retrofitted the system with the following:

• Controller – one ET-based controller with Web-based irrigation management capabilities.
• Turf and planted areas – check valves; institutional pop-up bodies with pressure compensation; and multi-stream, multi-trajectory rotating sprinklers.
• Parking-lot islands and trees – inline drip emitters.

SAVINGS: The site’s bimonthly water bill was reduced 38 percent – from $2,600 to $1,600 – during summer months year over year.

RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY UPGRADE
Hillside estate, Ross, Calif.

Site specifics: Single-family home; landscape includes mature plantings, planted beds and specimen trees, but no turf. Homeowner sought to reduce water bill, which had swelled to about $1,000 bimonthly.

OUTDATED SYSTEM: “There were some things that had been an issue for many years,” Campbell says, pointing to leaking valves as one major cause of the high water use on the 15-year-old system. Other outdated components included:

• Controller – Two, 12-station traditional timers that were prone to quick battery loss. This created scheduling and maintenance difficulties as these controllers lacked non-volatile memory and therefore needed to be repro-grammed every time the batteries died or the power went out.
• Planted/bed areas – standard sprayheads on all zones except for two drip zones for hillside trees.

SMART UPGRADE: This system was long overdue for renovation, so he made the following changes:

• Controller – replaced the two
   outdated conventional timers with a new controller featuring a weather module and flow meter.
• Valves – replaced all valves.
• Planted/bed areas – converted all standard sprayheads to drip emitters or multi-stream, multi-trajectory rotating sprinklers.

SAVINGS: The changes resulted in a 50-percent reduction in gallons used – as much as 30,000 gallons in one billing cycle. It also reduced the two-month water bill to $243 from $900-$1,200.