Q: We are living in an area that is having a drought. We were talking to a neighbor, and he said that he was thinking about upgrading his irrigation system to a smart system. I am not sure what a smart irrigation system does that our current system doesn’t do. We watch the weather and the rainfall and adjust accordingly. We have many plants that are drought-tolerant, and we let our lawn turn brown so we don’t use too much water, but I was wondering what you think of a smart irrigation system.
A: I think you are doing the right thing in checking this out. The typical old-fashioned irrigation controller is clock- and calendar-based. It turns the various irrigation zones on and off one at a time, depending on what you have set it to do. For instance, it will run a zone for 20 minutes twice a week, or on even or odd days. It may be raining at that time, but the system doesn’t know that, and it runs anyway.
