Green Tip- Lawn Irrigation

OK this post may be a bit strange since we are in the middle of our monsoon season. Last week I attended a meeting where a business friend of mine, Karl Schottler with Paramount Landscaping, spoke about lawn irrigation systems. His company installs and designs irrigation systems and after listening to his presentation I now have a greater understanding of what is entailed in the design and make up of the systems. Paramount looks at each project separately "no two jobs are alike", they take soil samples, shading considerations and type of vegetation and or grass that the system will be serving. All of this makes sense when you sit down and think about it.

I have a personal tale of how shade will affect plants, tree's and such. Just about 12 years ago my wife and I planted four Bradford pear tree's in our yard. There is one tree that has fully shaded roots (due to a privacy fence) another one who's roots are partially shaded and then there are two that get no shade at all. Well the biggest and fullest of them all is the one with full shade, and the two that get full sun (no shade) are drastically smaller. Just goes to show that the way the sun hit the tree roots did affect their growth.

So what does a tree have to do with lawn irrigation, well Karl brought up a great point, lawn irrigation is really more than just throwing a sprinkler and a few hundred feet of hose around your yard. In addition to Paramount taking the above steps that I mentioned, they also use this device called a "Solar Sync." The Solar Sync measures the sun's rays (hence the tree story), air temperature, rain and also the amount of water you are using. The device then can determine if you need the irrigation system to run or not.

This device is definitely something that I would suggest, it seems very affordable and will save some of our earths water from being wasted. I cant tell you how many times I have seen a sprinkler system running while it is raining outside, that sounds a little wasteful to me. Too bad Paramount didn't design those systems!

To find out more about Paramount Landscaping visit their website at www.paramountkc.com  or to check out more on the Solar Sync go to www.hunterindustries.com/Products/Sensors/solarsync.html

James Gallet
www.envirotechks.com