It's About Water

Saving water while maintaining a healthy landscape is the goal of SmartLine. The results are in. SmartLine works. Water savings can range from 20% to over 50% while runoff is virtually eliminated. SmartLine controller and on-site weather station testing began in the 90's to culminate in the 1998 patent application (U.S. Patent No. 6,314,340). Since that time, testing has been conducted around the world in countries like the United States, Australia, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Hungary, and South Africa. Results of independent tests validate SmartLine's effectiveness.

CIMIS vs.
CIMIS is the leading weather station network in California. A published study compares the ET calculations of CIMIS weather stations to the ET calculations of SmartLine.* Results were analyzed for 10 geographically diverse sites over a 7-year period to produce 70 years of combined data. The result: SmartLine ET calculations highly correlate to the CIMIS ET calculations, generally within 5%. Since installing CIMIS weather stations at every irrigation site would not be economically feasible, SmartLine controllers and SLW Series On-Site Weather Stations are the practical choice for saving water and money. 

Colorado Water Conservation District

A Colorado water conservation district is one of the nation's leaders in water conservation efforts and testing water conserving devices. Since 2001, the SmartLine controller has been included in a study of ET controller effectiveness. The district calculates ET (including true Lysimeter measurements), estimates plant water requirements (PWR line shown in the graph), and measures actual SmartLine water output (WM line shown in the graph).* The result: SmartLine water output tracks consistently with plant water requirements. Meeting plant watering needs while saving water is the beauty of SmartLine.

*U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, RECLAMATION: Managing Water in the West - Weather Based Technologies for Residential Irrigation Scheduling, May 2004, pp. 10-14.

Marin Municipal Water District

Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD) is a conservation-driven water district north of San Francisco, CA. In preparation for broad-based implementation of weather based controllers, MMWD placed SmartLine and a competitor's satellite-dependent controller at various sites to analyze changes in water usage (versus 2001 base year). The result: Even with 6.8% and 8.8% increases in ET, SmartLine still saved 28% and 24% and outperformed the competition by 23% and 26% in consecutive years.