company.
"It is very typical -- people over-water. They set their controllers once [often for the hottest summer weeks] and they leave them."
The new system, made by Network Services Corp. of Petaluma, California, should be on the market in 2001, said founder and chairman Mike Marian, who invented the system. CTSI will help sell the satellite sprinkler controls in exchange for a cut of the proceeds.
Homeowners will pay $100 to $150 for a purple, roughly 8-by-8-by-2-inch (20-by-20-by-5-centimeter) WeatherTrak sprinkler-control box that receives signals from a paging-service satellite and replaces an automated sprinkler system’s existing control box. (Test models now cost $250.) There also will be a $4 monthly charge to have the satellite send commands to the control box.
In recent weeks, new tests began at 13 homes in the Salt Lake City suburb of West Jordan, Utah, and 10 homes in the Portland suburb of Wilsonville, Oregon, said Ash.
He said satellite sprinkler controls also would be tested this fall on 50 Los Angeles homes, 250 more homes in Irvine and another 300 elsewhere in Orange County, California. Fifty Reno, Nevada homes will try satellite-run sprinklers next spring.
How does the system work?
The first step is a water audit of each home to be equipped with satellite sprinkler controls. Sprinkler leaks or other problems are fixed. Auditors determine how much water the sprinklers deliver to the yard.
conditions, then reprograms sprinklers to irrigate each part of the yard appropriately.
Rain sensors override earlier commands if rain falls after the sprinklers are programmed for dry weather. The sprinklers can be programmed manually if they do not receive satellite commands.
Marian declined to identify the satellite and backup satellites his company hires to handle the sprinkler-control service. Not all satellites can perform the task, and Marian doesn’t want to help potential competitors identify those that can.
He said the satellite-commanded sprinkler system grew out of another company he runs: Solar Wind Systems, which makes sophisticated sprinkler timers, including those controlled by radio. Those systems are used by several cities in California and at the airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Marian said. But they are more expensive and require radio licenses, unlike the satellite-run system, he said.
West Jordan, a city of almost 70,000 people, decided to test satellite-controlled sprinklers as one of several efforts to conserve water.
"All the new housing developments are putting in grass, and a lot of people are over-watering," said Carl Hanover, city water-resources manager. "Demand is growing faster than supply. … Approximately 65 percent of the city’s water is used outdoors for watering. We are concentrating on reducing that percentage."
Hanover said that by minimizing over-watering, satellite-run sprinklers also reduce herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers and fecal matter that run from yards into storm drains and, ultimately, local waterways.
If the experiment works, the city will consider installing satellite sprinkler controls for homeowners who volunteer, letting them repay the city via monthly utility bills.
In Irvine, the 40 homes tested already were conservative water users, yet satellite sprinkler controls reduced outdoor water use as much as 25 percent, Ash said.
He said homeowners agreed they saved water, their grass looked better and "they never had to touch their controllers or again. They liked it."
One test participant was a doctor whose method of programming his old sprinkler control box was to "invite a friend, get out a six pack of beer, schedule the controller, then sit down and watch sports," Ash recalled.
With the satellite controlling his sprinklers, "now he says, ‘I can go straight to the beer and sports!'"
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