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70% of Your Water

Did you know that the average Californian uses 70% of their water on irrigating their landscape? That’s right. With water costs going up, how would you like to make a significant reduction in that 70% usage, all while keeping your current landscape? You can retrofit your existing sprinklers, and you don’t even need to replace the whole system. That means no huge mess! We don’t have to rip out your lawn or shrubs to do this. If your irrigation system was designed well, we can help save you water and money, all while paying for most or all of the materials cost through local water agency rebates. We’re experts at irrigation. We can come to you for a consultation, inspect and test your existing system, and let you know what we can do to help save you water and money. Even a well maintained system may not be as efficient as it can be.

Smart Timer Installation

First off, we definitely recommend replacing your current automatic timer with a “smart timer”. Replacing this one thing is the starting point for any irrigation retrofit. We’ll set up the system for you so it knows your property’s sun exposure, scans weather conditions regularly, knows your plants exact water needs, knows your property soil type (i.e. clay, sandy), and knows the type of sprinklers or drip emitters you have so it can send out the exact amount of water needed in the most efficient way. The “most efficient way” means little to no runoff, puddling, or evaporation, so each drop of water matters and is used wisely. This system avoids water waste at every turn. For example, in hotter conditions it gives your plants more water, in rainy conditions it turns the system off, and it prevents runoff from over watering. Installing a smart timer is the starting point of any irrigation retrofit job. For sites less than an acre, you can get rebates of about $100 for installing a smart timer. For sites over an acre, you can get $50 per irrigation valve/station by installing a smart timer.

Nozzle Replacement

Next, we’ll look at replacing the nozzles on each sprinkler. A nozzle is the small, top part, of the spray head on a sprinkler that releases the water out of the sprinkler. If the area you’re watering is relatively flat, we don’t even have to replace the body of the spray-head. We can just unscrew and replace the nozzle tips. That means no digging and no mess. Older nozzles tend to spray larger water droplets than newer, high efficiency, nozzles. Why is this a problem? The ground soaks up water at a slow rate and if your sprinklers release water at a faster rate than the ground can soak it up then you’re going to have runoff or even excess water evaporation. All that waste adds up. Newer, high efficiency nozzles, release water at the same rate that the ground soaks it up. At a recent site, we saw a water savings of 100 cu.ft. per watering session. That’s 748.5 gal of water! All that water was saved by replacing rotary sprinklers that sprayed 2 gal/min. to nozzles that spray .3 gal/min. That is huge! On that same property, the new nozzles release water so slowly that it gives the ground enough time to soak up the water. The old nozzles sprayed so much that the water just ran off down the hill and into the street.

Sprinkler Replacement

Lastly, the third thing we recommend replacing is the entire sprinkler body. We highly recommend this in certain situations, such as an property with hillsides or slopes that are irrigated. On slopes, once the sprinklers are off, the last sprinkler near the bottom of the slope usually drizzles out water, which drains all the left-over water out of the pipe and wastes it. We can replace your sprinklers with more advanced sprinklers that have a check valve in each one. The check valve device locks the sprinkler after it’s off and will not release water. This means no water waste from “leakdown”, which wastes water and erodes the slope in some case. We can connect you with rebate incentives that pay for most of your project, all while saving you money in the long run. Short term AND long term savings make this a no-brainer; it’s a win win! In many cases, we can get you rebates that pay for 95-100% of the cost of each nozzle you replace.

Resources

• To check out rebate programs and see if you reside in a qualifying area, visit http://www.socalwatersmart.com/index.php/estimateyourrebate and click “Estimate My Rebate Online!”
• Also, you have us, Scarlett’s Landscape. Give us a call at (805) 642-3002 and we can set you up for a consultation and guide you in the right direction.