“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” If you read the Rime of the Ancient Mariner when you were in school, you might remember that line. And if you’ve spent any time in California lately, you might have felt almost as if you were living that line.
Because that expression of despair from the ancient rime bears a certain degree of similarity to what’s happening in California these days.
California currently suffers from the most devastating drought in the state’s history. The governor recently declared a state of emergency as a result of the drought. And yet the state borders the world’s largest ocean for nearly a thousand miles.
“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” Water, water everywhere, nor any drop for lawns, either.
California’s Lawns Going Brown
That’s why California’s lawns are going brown. Statewide watering restrictions have prevented homeowners in California from providing enough water for their lawns to stay healthy. As the governor recently bluntly declared: “The idea of your nice little green lawn getting watered every day, those days are past.”
And in many cases lawns are not only going brown. They’re also going dead.
It’s becoming a common site in California to see huge, sprawling mansions surrounded with lawns that look sickly and brown. Or even completely dead. Though once lush and emerald-green, even the lawns of the rich and famous are becoming victims of the drought.
Water has become so precious in California that even the greatest wealth cannot buy more than the law permits. And so for both rich and poor, brown has become the new green for California lawns.
A Ray of Hope
While meteorologists don’t offer much hope for a dramatic turnaround in the near future, technology may be offering a reprieve for the countless thousands of California lawns teetering on the brink of death.
That new technology is called “smart sprinkler systems.”
Smart sprinklers use controllers to process multiple streams of data in determining how much water to apply to a lawn. Instead of just turning on and off at predetermined times, smart sprinkler systems evaluate what a lawn actually needs at any given time.
How do they do that? By retrieving, monitoring, and weighing variables of data such as:
- Temperature
- Relative humidity
- Day length
- Wind velocity
- Local forecasts
Smart sprinkler systems even take into account specific factors such as the type of soil of the lawn, the type of vegetation grown, and even the slope of the lawn.
Based upon all those many conditions and calculations, the smart controller determines exactly how much water the lawn really needs. And then it directs the system sprinklers to apply exactly that much water – no more, and no less.
The Technology Yields Impressive Results
How much water can a smart sprinkler system save? As much as fifty percent! That means that a California lawn can be kept healthy, lush and green with as little as just half the amount of water it once received on a regular basis.
And experts believe that smart sprinklers are going to have a huge impact on keeping California’s lawns green.
Of course, the benefits of smart sprinklers are applicable everywhere, not just in California. Because applying the just-right amount of water to any landscape also yields the additional benefits of healthier plants and lower water bills.
So even if you’ve got water, water everywhere, with plenty of drops to drink, it’ll be worth your while looking into this new technology. The smart sprinkler system that TLC offers, Hydrawise, would be a great place to start.