Saving Water in Orange County

TRU Landscape Services was called out to a large commercial building this week in Fountain Valley. Fountain Valley is a city located in Orange County, California and is surround by the Cities of Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, and Huntington Beach. This commercial building has large landscape areas. The owner wanted to know how to save water and money. We started by checking the sprinkler timer; the settings were set for 15 minutes a day for each station. Orange County has been receiving rain these last couple of months. It has not been a lot of rain but enough to keep most things living. Running the sprinklers for 15 minutes a day during the winter is way too much water. TRU Landscape Services has most of our sprinkler timers shut off or turned down to one day a week. This owner was mad at his landscape crew for not setting the timer. We explained that’s part of a good landscape maintenance company, to set the timer during the different seasons of the year.

Smart Controllers / Weather Based Controllers

We explained to our customer that a smart controller would help save water. Smart Controller or Weather Based timers use different techniques to monitor the water being used. The Smart controller we use the most is Smart Dial by Irritrol.  This Weather track enables controller uses daily ET values to adjust watering times to meet the specific needs of each landscape area for the ultimate in water management. These timers can save up to 20% of the water used. TRU Landscape Services is a certified installer of these timers and most other companies that make Weather based timers. These timers do take some landscape knowledge. You need to know what type of plants, Trees, and Turf that you are watering. Many factors are involved in programming one of these timers. We have seen  landscape companies install these timers and end up putting them into a manual mode, because they did not understand how to program the timers. By putting these timers into a manual mode it defeats the whole purpose of installing this style of timer. Most customers and landscapers do not pay attention to their sprinkler timer until they see brown spots on the grass. The rest of the time they just let the timer over water. Thousands of gallons of water are wasted everyday because of this. Orange County along with most other counties in Southern California is in a drought. Smart timers use a weather tower in your area to tell the timers how much water is necessary. This process is done using ET Values. ET is the amount of water lost from the soil through evaporation plus the plants water loss. This is known as transpiration, weather conditions affect both of these drastically. Many studies have been done on these timers proving that they work well. Most water departments will give a rebate for the installations of these timers. Please feel free to call our office if you should have any questions. 1-866-487-1359

Orange County Landscape Contractor

TRU Landscape has been performing landscape services throughout Orange County, California for the last 20 years. We offer competitive landscape contracting services including general landscape construction, hardscape construction, water features including pondless waterfalls, koi fish ponds, garden ponds, we also offer lightscaping, Synthetic Turf, putting greens, plus many other services.
Please call Tru Landscape toll free at : 866-487-1359