STEP ONE:  Water Usage Estimates and Consulting

The initial contact to look over the landscape and review your water costs is free. We will help you any way we can! In the beginning we contact city, state, and federal water conservation departments to see if there are any rebate programs available for your property.  We will also look for alternate sources of irrigation water.  This step determines HOW MUCH water your landscape needs and HOW MUCH YOU ARE GIVING IT.  If your landscape is receiving the correct amount of water we go no further - and you are charged nothing.  We will need 12 months of water bills and a plat mat of the landscape area.    


STEP TWO:  Irrigation Inspections 

These are also called "AUDITS", but full blown irrigation audits simply do not work.  Audits were primarily completed to save water and come up with a comprehensive watering schedule that meets the needs of the landscape.  Have they done that?  Not in my opinion, because the audits themselves can't provide correct information when the irrigation system and site  is not in perfect condition. And I have found that no one ever follows through with all the steps of the audit.  To do a comprehensive audit on the irrigation system requires that the SYSTEM be corrected to conform to the guidelines of the audit procedure.  Most systems I have inspected are in terrible shape.  The cost to bring them up to shape so an audit can be performed is enormous!  Plus the cost of the audit is normally in the thousands as well.  Audits are a great tool to use when everything is exactly perfect and the system is in perfect shape, but that doesn't work in the real world.   You don't need someone to tell you there are  problems.  You already know that.  What you need are solutions for the problems. We do the inspection and then correct the problems. 

What we do is inspect what is there and figure out how we can use what is there to its maximum capability.   We expect to see rotor heads on the same valve with spray heads.  We expect to see drip lines going to nothing or leaks in the landscape.  We expect to see control timers programmed incorrectly and without battery backups.  During our inspection we correct these items.  We make use of what is there and make it work!  After we have saved our clients thousands of dollars on water costs, we ask them to set aside part of that savings for future repairs and upgrades.    Every single landscape we have inspected has been over-irrigated, and many times grossly over-irrigated. 

Our irrigation inspection cost is $10 per sprinkler zone and $15 per drip zone.  For large properties with many different zones we provide a substantial discount per zone.  This cost includes correcting minor items like: Repairing drip heads and adjusting sprinkler heads. For major issues we will notify you and your landscape professional.  We manually turn on each zone and walk the property and inspect.  It's that simple.  As we inspect, we correct.  This inspection also helps us determine the water requirements of the landscape.  We take an inventory of the trees, shrubs, and groundcover.  We list their species so we can determine the amount of water each needs. We measure the grass areas to determine a total square footage.  All of this information helps us determine what are the water requirements of the landscape.  We know how much water the landscape needs in January and how much it needs in July.  That is how we budget the water cost of the landscape.  And our budget is usually 50% lower than the existing budget. 

STEP THREE:  Monthly Water Management

For a small monthly fee, we control the control timers, do field reports on the landscape conditions, and notify you and your landscape maintenance company of any problems we observe while doing our field inspections.  We adjust the timers for seasons, rain, and climate conditions.  In the past, we have found timers not working, turned off, re-programmed incorrectly and damaged.  We actually become the control timer and use our proprietary knowledge of your landscape to irrigate it.  We know how much water is needed each day, week and month.  We start by slowly reducing the amount of water your landscape has been receiving.  Like an addict, landscapes get used to high amounts of water.  If you reduce the watering too quickly, it will go into shock and die.  Over a period of weeks and months we monitor the landscape until we "dial in" the water requirements and substantially lower the water usage.  It takes more than just an inspection to correct the problems we find. 

  
STEP FOUR:   FUTURE UPGRADES: SMART CONTROLLER IMPLEMENTATION

These are irrigation controllers that have sensors attached to them.  There is usually a weather sensor and a soil moisture sensor that sends a signal to the controller telling it to water or not to water.  The most important aspect of the SMART CONTROLLER is the programmer telling it what type of landscape it is controlling and what are the water requirements.   The placement of the sensors is critical and the monitoring of the controller is still needed by a professional water management person.  We assist our clients by getting them rebates to pay for this new technology. 




A perfect landscape irrigation system would have SMART CONTROLLERS, NO LEAKS, MP ROTATOR HEADS, NO SPRAY HEADS, and an AQUA TRAC water management contract.