Water Story: Rich Salkin

Rich Salkin
Omaha, NE
Rachio user for over 1 year




Q. What led you to purchase your Rachio Iro?
A. I heard about the Iro before it was available and thought that it was the best idea I've seen. I was looking for a replacement for my timer based controller for a while. I was getting frustrated having the sprinklers go off even though we just had a large rain storm. I liked the idea of a sprinkler controller being able to track rain fall amounts and decide if water was needed. After finding the Iro, I was hooked and pre-ordered it.

Q. How has the Iro changed your lawn/ landscape?
A. My lawn has never looked better! The back of my house faces south east and gets a lot of sun. It is also slightly sloped and never really greened up very well. It also turned brown in the late summer because of the sun and slope. My back yard improved dramatically after I installed the Iro.

Q. Where is the best place you have controlled your Iro from?
A. From work! Believe it or not! I planted some new grass seed and forgot to water that part of the yard. So I opened up the app on my iPhone and started that zone.

Q. What is your favorite feature of the Rachio app or webapp?
A. I like to make sure that my sprinkler heads are in good working order so I love the ability to walk around my yard and turn zones on or off from my phone. It's a lot easier to control the sprinkler system when you are right in the middle of the yard.

Q. How has owning an Iro enhanced your understanding of your water use?
A. Seeing the amount of water that was saved simply by knowing how much rain we've received or how much is forcasted has given me a respect for water conservation. I think that if more people would change out their timer controller for a Rachio Iro we wouldn't be having water issues.

Q. Do you have any other stories about the Rachio Iro you'd like to share?
A. I have be talking about the Iro and how it has saved me a ton of money on water bills to anyone that would listen. A number of my friends jumped on the band wagon and got an Iro.

Q. How long have you owned your Rachio Iro?
A. I was one of the first to receive one so I've owned an Rachio Iro since they were released.

What is evapotranspiration

Evapotranspiration. If you can pronounce that, congratulations, you’ve reached another level in your irrigation life.

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a fancy way of referring to the amount of water that leaves the ground, through two methods:

1. Good old evaporation, when water turns into vapor
2. Plant transpiration, when plants ‘breath’ and release moisture into the air

In the real world, there is no good way to distinguish between evaporation and transpiration, so ET is commonly referred to as one process. Furthermore, it is just one part of the water cycle, which describes how water moves throughout our environment. This includes such fun terms as condensation, sublimation, seepage, and (my personal favorite) infiltration. However, for our purposes, we only really care about ET.

Knowing how much water leaves the ground at any point is completely vital to efficient water management for one reason: it allows us to know how much water we need to add back to the ground.

There are only two main ways that water gets returned back into the ground: precipitation and irrigation. To successfully calculate how much water needs to be returned to the ground by irrigation, you must know about precipitation, but that is relatively easy to track.

That being said, measuring ET can be a challenge. The amount of evapotranspiration fluctuates throughout the year, primarily because of temperature. ET is higher with warmer temperatures and lower with cooler temperatures. This is the main reason why the amount of water your landscape needs increases in the summer and decreases in the spring and fall.

* Image from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

However, there are many variables that go into its calculation like soil type, plant type, temperature, direct or indirect sunlight, wind, ambient humidity, etc. Accurate data for all of these variables is imperative to calculate the most correct ET value. Without ET, it’s impossible to correctly calculate how much water your landscape requires.

If you’d like to understand how Rachio incorporates evapotranspiration, check out this excellent support article.

Rachio PROfile with Michael Greathouse

Michael Greathouse
GreatWater Irrigation and Ecoscapes
Fort Worth, TX
http://www.greatwaterirrigation.com/



Q. When was the first time you installed a Rachio?
A. April this year (2015), about a week after it was introduced to me through our supplier, Ewing.

Q. What’s your favorite feature of the Rachio Iro?
A. The weather intelligence and water budgeting features. North Texas has some very unpredictable weather and this year has definitely been extreme. This controller can help my clients stay ahead of their water needs as our climate has taken us from a serious drought to tropical storm levels of rain.

Q. What do you like about Rachio?
A. I love that its core function is to help people save water in a very easy, automated way. Our business is centered around helping people water smarter. Being able to give irrigation systems a smart controller allows them to start saving water immediately while knowing their yard is still getting all the water it needs.

Q. Do your customers like Rachio?
A. Almost everyone I've introduced to the Iro is very interested in the product and think it's something that really just makes sense. Every controller I've installed has been met with novel excitement and enthusiasm. Once a customer starts getting the notifications showing that their system is now interacting with the world around it, they really start to understand and trust that it's making a significantly positive impact on their water usage.

Q. Has Rachio changed your relationship with your customers?
A. Talking to my customers about the different smart features of the Iro controller has helped bring their attention and interest to other smart components that are available such as flow sensors, soil sensors and rain/freeze sensors. We've noticed that when our customers gain the ability to control their irrigation system using the same device they use for the rest of daily life, they feel more empowered to manage it effectively since it's easier to use.

Q. How long have you been in business?
A. My company was founded in May 2014 after having worked in the industry for over 15 years.

Q. What’s your favorite aspect of landscaping or irrigation?
A. I love being able to help solve people’s problems with their landscaping and irrigation systems. Whether they've never used a sprinkler system, or they've been treated unfairly in the past, I like leaving the property owner feeling like they understand their irrigation systems better than they ever have before. We're also really proud of the fact that we're offering products and services that don't just make peoples landscapes look better, but that actually have a tangibly positive effect on our local environment by significantly reducing their landscape water and chemical treatment usage.

Avoid Water Runoff With Cycle and Soak

Have you ever seen water dribbling off a lawn onto the pavement or into a gutter? The sprinklers are likely still running, but the yard isn’t absorbing the water anymore. It’s frustrating, right? All that water being used, but it’s not going where it’s supposed to: the yard. This is called runoff, and it's a waste of water.

How do you avoid water runoff?

The best way to avoid runoff* is with a technique called cycle and soak!

Cycle and soak is a technique developed to avoid water runoff, making your water use more efficient, and making sure your yard gets the moisture it needs. The basic idea is to break up your irrigation into two or three parts in order to allow the dirt to better absorb the water. This has a few key benefits:

• It allows your grass or plants to properly absorb the water.
• It promotes root depth, which makes your yard more drought and disease resistant.

Using the same metaphor that we used in our MAD article, imagine that your yard is a dense sponge. When you pour water onto a sponge, it takes time for the water to work its way through the entire sponge. And you need the water to get through the entire sponge, because you want all of your roots to have water!

By breaking up an irrigation session into shorter parts, this lets the water work its way through the entire sponge, making room for the second or third cycle of water to follow. It also allows the water to get deeper into the soil.

How do you calculate how long each cycle should take?

The short answer is that you need to know the density of your sponge, and that depends primarily on what type of dirt you have. For example, sandy soil absorbs water very quickly, but clay soil does not, and there is a wide range of soil in between. An irrigation professional can easily tell you what type of soil you have, and it’s great to know on a zone by zone basis. Most professionals would be happy to do an audit of your landscape in order to determine this info, and make sure the rest of your irrigation system is optimized.

Your soil type, plus the type of plant being watered, plus a few other factors, determines how long the irrigation session should last. For example, one zone might need 45 minutes in one session. With cycle and soak, this would get broken into 2 or 3 different sessions, perhaps 15 minutes of watering followed by a 30 minute rest, then another 15 minutes of watering, then another 30 minute rest, then the final 15 minutes of watering. This allows the water to truly soak the landscape, without runoff.

If you would like to know how Rachio incorporates Cycle and Soak, and all the variables that come into play, please check out our support article on Smart Cycle.

* Assuming that your sprinkler heads are pointed where they are supposed to!

We're MAD For Irrigation

MAD. It’s all the rage.

But, what is MAD? I’m glad you asked.

MAD is an acronym for Management Allowable Depletion, the best and most recommended way to schedule your irrigation. But what is it?

To explain, let me use an analogy. Imagine your soil is a sponge, and imagine that sponge is as full of water as possible. As the grass or plants absorbs water from the sponge, or as it evaporates into the air, the amount of water in the sponge becomes less.

With an older style of irrigation, water would be added to the sponge on a fixed, regular schedule, regardless of how much water has been removed. For example, the sponge would have water added every three days for 30 minutes each day. This could result in over-watering, because the sponge is already full, or under-watering, because the sponge became completely dry before a fill up.

With MAD, the goal is to add water to the sponge when it reaches a certain amount of dryness, but before it is completely dry. This has a few key benefits:

• It encourages plants to develop deeper root structures, which creates stronger, healthier plants that are more resistant to drought.
• It requires less frequent waterings, because each watering is for a longer period of time with the goal of deeper watering. The overall effect is less water used.
• It allows less water to be lost to evaporation, because the water is deeper into the ground.

It is called Management Allowable Depletion because this irrigation schedule allows the amount of water to deplete to a fixed level before refill.

Compared to a fixed schedule, MAD would fill up the sponge only when required, which could be every two days, or five days, or even longer!

There are two key factors that need to be calculated for MAD style of irrigation: how big the sponge is, and how much water is in the sponge at any one time. To get to those two elements, there are quite a few data points that go into this:

• The type of plant
• The type of soil
• The amount of precipitation
• The amount of water the plant absorbs
• The amount of water that evaporates

The challenge in calculating MAD is ensuring that the inputs are correct, particularly because they are ongoing inputs. However, once you have these inputs, you can create an irrigation schedule that is tailor made for your soil and plants, while saving a large amount of water.

Whenever you install or update your irrigation system, this is a great opportunity to make sure that you know what type of soil you have, and what types of plants are in each zone. This will allow you to be as accurate as possible when creating your watering schedule.

If you’d like to know how Rachio incorporates MAD, please check out our support articles on Flex Schedules.

July Is Smart Irrigation Month

Welcome to Smart Irrigation month!

What is Smart Irrigation month you may ask?

July is the peak demand month of the year for water, so the Irrigation Association created Smart Irrigation month to raise awareness of water use in the United States. They strive to educate everyone on how we might better use one of our most precious natural resources.

Founded in 2005, the month has steadily gained traction, particularly as parts of the country have experienced their own form of drought.

According to the IA, the month is focused on the 3 following principles:

• Educate businesses, homeowners, growers/producers and other users about efficient water use.
• Encourage industry firms and professionals to promote smart irrigation practices and technologies.
• Position your organization as a leader in smart water stewardship.

At Rachio, we fully embrace Smart Irrigation and the idea that everyone can do something to make their water use more efficient. It’s what drives us as a company, and we have the EPA credentials to prove it.

Throughout July, we’re going to start a few initiatives within the company.

1. First, we’re going to start an educational blog series about the best practices related to maintaining your landscape. 
2. Second, we’re going to highlight some of the trailblazing homeowners who are using Rachio to increase control over their irrigation practices, saving water and money in the process. 
3. Third, we’re going to highlight some of the fantastic irrigation professionals who are helping homeowners install Rachio Iros and keep their landscapes at peak efficiency.

Finally, we’d love to engage with you about your smart irrigation practices. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or whatever social tool you prefer!