Wasteful Watering
Wasteful Watering
Sometimes half the water delivered in a sprinkler system doesn’t reach or can’t be utilized by the intended turf or plants. Poor sprinkler design, broken or leaking systems, excessive or improper run times and outdated sprinkler controllers all result in wasted water. Listed here are numerous causes of wasted water and in most cases, wasted dollars too.
- The most obvious factors – broken sprinkler heads and broken pipes – easy to spot, simple to fix
- Less obvious – leaking sprinkler heads or leaking pipes. These can go on unnoticed for weeks, months, or longer.
- Leaking heads – all typical sprinkler heads have a seal around the riser stem. If this seal is worn from use or cracked, water will leak often imperceptibly (and wastefully) into the surrounding ground
- Leaking pipes or valve assemblies – a small crack in a pipe or near a valve assembly can leak water into the surrounding ground. If the area is sloped or near the perimeter of the property, these slow leaks can go on unnoticed for years.
- Evaporation – Overhead watering during daylight hours can promote this perpetual water waster. Depending on the fixture and the heat of the day, sometimes 10% of the water intended for turf will evaporate before it hits the ground! (See sprayheads) In other cases, excess water on the ground will evaporate….
- Excessive run times – at some point, ground becomes saturated and cannot receive more water – and at this point water evaporates, runs off, or lies there making things overly wet, difficult to mow or worse still, a haven for mosquitos
- Improper head selection for the area requiring irrigation – each sprinkler fixture is designed to cover or water a specific size area or plant type. Using the incorrect one will result in the same problems just described. Just as a large Chevy Suburban is intended for a larger family or a bus is intended for dozens of school kids, certain sprinklers are intended for larger turf areas (only). We often see systems where the contractor employed “one size fits all” sprinkler use. This poor planning results in un-even coverage and wasted water.
- A sprinkler zone containing mixed types of sprinklers is a recipe for multiple problems. Some areas will be overly wet, while others too dry (grass not green or lush). Turn things up to get the dry area green and the wet area gets wetter still, turn down the run time to dry the wet area and the dry area burns out.
- A sprinkler zone with heads watering both sunny and shady areas at the same time creates the same issues as a zone with mixed sprinkler type
- Outdated controllers don’t allow the flexibility needed to meter the water into each area as needed. They often have more blunt off/on and global settings that, you guessed it result in water waste
- Simple poor programming – this is a significant culprit in the world of excess watering. Often owners will simply “set it and forget it.” Unmonitored, this is an extremely wasteful practice. Worse still….is the mowing company who says, “we will turn on your system and program your controller for you.” The employees on these mowing crews, while professional and skilled in turf cutting, are rarely trained to understand things like sprinkler precipitation, frequency and saturation. Blunt programming and un-examined systems result in yet more water waste.
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