T. Lake Environmental Services Blog

Weathermatic is your key to smart water management

Written by Tim Lake | May 10, 2022 4:38:00 PM

Having a beautiful property is an investment in planning, planting, and maintaining it. Doing it right is a financial investment, but like any investment, if you manage it right, it will pay dividends for many years to come.

 

Nobody would create a beautiful landscape to then ignore or neglect it. But it can happen. Ironically, one of the biggest killers of landscape plants is not what you’d think it is: it’s not pests, sun, or disease, it’s overwatering! And we all know what happens when underwatering happens. Your landscape gets thirsty, and then it turns brown. 

 

 

Water can be a tricky thing in maintaining a landscape. Clean water is a precious resource that should be properly managed, yet we all tend to waste it because it’s just so accessible, especially in our region of the country.

 

But we believe smart water management is important, and we’re proud to be a premier partner for Weathermatic. Since 1945, Weathermatic has been a leader in irrigation for both residential and commercial landscape applications.

 

What’s Different about Weathermatic

 

It’s an important question because fixed time-based systems water the same whether it's 50 or 105 degrees outside, which wastes precious water resources, wastes money, and can damage plants. Instead of watering on a timer, Weathermatic irrigates your landscape based on our Georgia weather and site specifics, such as your sprinkler system, and plant, and soil types.  It then continually monitors local weather for healthier plants and more beautiful landscapes.

While rain sensors are a good option for irrigation system control, they don’t always work. There are a lot of reasons why a rain sensor might not be working, and each one is a reason that we recommend remote, 24/7 monitoring of irrigation systems.  When you have continual visibility into your controllers and system functions, you can shut down zones automatically or on-demand from any location if rain is in the forecast, a leak or line break is detected, or for any other reason. 

 

An Environmentally (and Cost) Friendly Approach to Landscape Irrigation

 

Weathertech’s remote access is also great if you are serious about saving water. Modern weather-monitoring controllers, like the Weathermatic SmartLink system, actively monitor the weather and make daily adjustments to the watering schedule to eliminate waste. Time-based systems don’t think at all. Studies have shown that the SmartLink system can save an average of 38% of the water used over the old time-based systems. Rain or shine, hot or cold, these state-of-the-art systems are always thinking about how to give your landscape the right amount of water at the right time.

 

 

A more thoughtful approach to irrigation also lets you reallocate the money you invest in landscaping. Instead of spending 60% of your landscape budget on landscape and 40% on water utility expenses, you can direct 80% of that budget towards landscape enhancements and only give 20% to the utility. It’s entirely possible by updating your old time-based irrigation systems to weather-based systems like Weathermatic’s SmartLink. These adaptive irrigation technologies often cut 20, 30, or even 40% off your landscape water use. That’s more money for plants and flower

 

We’d love to give you a demonstration of how the SmartLink system looks and take a look at how it could have a positive impact on your landscape, especially as this season begins to warm up and those plants start to feel the heat of our hot Georgia summers!