A Complete Irrigation Solution - It's What Smart Users Are Looking For Today
Let's start with the "why".
If anyone ever needs to be reminded of the importance and relative scarcity of water available for irrigation in Florida, taking a quick look at the watering restrictions imposed by each County and District should do the trick. These restrictions set out details such as the fact that in Suwanee River, during Daylight Savings Time, residents are only allowed to water their gardens on two days of the week, and in South West Florida the same rules apply, but with the days specifically set depending on whether the houses have an even or odd number.
The reason for rules and restrictions of this kind isn’t difficult to figure out, particularly if you happened to live or work in Alachua County, north-central Florida this year. The weather in March saw only 0.99 inches of rain, which is just 25% of what would normally be expected and added up to the driest March in the county since 1932. While the climate across Florida can vary hugely from place to place and throughout the year, the risk of drought is ever-present, even if it comes hard on the heels of extreme rainfall just a few weeks before.
Take a look around Florida, however, and you could be forgiven for thinking that there’s never any kind of problem with irrigation. The greenery which residents and businesses know and love and which helps to make our part of the world one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country may well be nature at its very best, but it's nature given a huge helping hand by modern irrigation methods.
The Main Methods
At risk of repeating ourselves, let’s just take another quick look at the main methods used to irrigate the landscape.
Sprinkler Systems
A main pipeline is laid in the area being irrigated and smaller pipelines are connected to this main feed. Each of these smaller lines will lead to a rotating nozzle, or set of nozzles, which then showers the landscape with droplets of water resembling natural rainfall. This method is particularly useful for those situations in which soil conservation is an issue, as it applies the water in a gentler manner with the rate of watering being adjusted to take account of the immediate surroundings. When sprinkling onto a sloping soil surface, for example, the rate of irrigation will have to be such that excess water doesn’t build on the surface and run off down the slope before it has had time to penetrate the surface.
A modern smart solution will control the sprinklers via automated programming which can set a timetable for multiple units from a single control panel, and can also react to real-time information received from temperature or rainfall sensors for example, which feed into the system.
Drip Systems
A drip system applies the water in question directly to the roots of plants. Pipes are laid in the area being irrigated and, once the water reaches the base of the plants themselves it drips through small holes, offering direct and highly location-specific irrigation. This method is particularly useful in those areas where water applied using a method such as sprinklers would be vulnerable to waste through evaporation or wind. It also uses the water in a highly efficient manner, targeting individual plants or plant beds rather than simply watering a general area.
Subsurface Drip System
A subsurface drip system delivers the irrigation beneath the soil surface in the root zone. It is a particularly effective solution for those landscapes which feature a large number of slopes or are very irregularly shaped. The fact that every drop of the water is delivered precisely to the roots of the plants in question also means that the overall water use can be kept to a minimum, and waste eliminated altogether. In situations such as the Alachua County drought detailed above, a subsurface system of this kind can keep the landscape alive and thriving even when the water available to use is somewhat limited.
A Bespoke, Total Irrigation Solution
If you’re reading this, you’re probably well aware of some of the issues that can beset irrigation systems and the problems they cause for the people that rely on them. Irrigation as a method or process of harnessing the available water to propagate land has been around at least since the ancients created flood plains to grow their crops. In the 21st century, however, digital technology combines with engineering excellence to create smart irrigation systems which deliver the water a landscape needs with an unprecedented degree of precision.
Once a smart irrigation system is installed, it can be controlled at any time from any place using app technology which links to the central control panel. In addition to this, the run-time schedule which is set initially is completely flexible, with data such as predicted and real-time rainfall being used to tweak and alter the amount, method and location of the irrigation on a day-to-day basis. The result is an irrigation system which offers the best of both worlds – high impact irrigation and a careful use of water which cuts waste and costs to the absolute minimum.
Smart People Want Engineering, Technology - and Competent Customer Support
Our experience in irrigation has taught us that the only right solution is a bespoke solution. This means that each individual irrigation installation should be made up of whatever combination of engineering, technology and support is best suited to the location and people or business it is there to serve. Making that choice involves two things. The first of these is a full audit of not only existing water use but also the nature and topography of the landscape itself, from the type of soil to the plants to be watered and even factors such as the hours of sunlight per day each part of that landscape will receive.
Case Study: Smart Irrigation Project
We worked with this community to design and implement a proactive irrigation consolidation strategy. This resulted in the replacement of 24 problematic builder-installed pump systems with 10 Hoover Flowguard® pump systems. The community achieved both their key objectives of Variable Speed Control and Automated Pump System Controls, as well as reducing maintenance costs and ongoing irrigation repairs, energy use, sod replacement and fertilizer costs. Read our case study on this smart irrigation project.
This information can be used to design and install a tailor-made irrigation solution offering a turnkey irrigation pump station installation backed up with the right smart irrigation system using the power of data and digital technology, and reliable, knowledgeable customer support to back it up.
An Irrigation Solution that Continuously Evolves
At Hoover, our irrigation solution combines use data with the power of cloud computing to inform not only the improvements we build into our systems but also best practice - which we can then deliver to our customers in the form of support and advice. This approach has advanced the whole concept of smart irrigation systems. Rather than operating as unique, unconnected entities, work as a large-scale network. The "Hoover Cloud" uses the learning generated by individual use to constantly make improvements to system operation and functionality and to the support and advice we provide our customers.
For every irrigation project undertaken by Hoover, we’re interested in offering a complete solution that can be relied upon to deliver water when and where it’s needed, save time, money and precious resources, provide the people and expertise needed when problems do arise and gives the users of the system complete control and oversight of their irrigation 24/7. We know people want this, and what our clients say bears testament to this approach.
