Irrigreen ‘Prints’ And Executes A Precision Watering Plan For Your Lawn

Sustainability Irrigreen ‘Prints’ And Executes A Precision Watering Plan For Your Lawn Jeff Kart Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Following New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories. Got it! Oct 15, 2022, 01:47pm EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Irrigreen prints water in the exact shape of your lawn.

Irrigreen This may not seem timely with fall coming on and winter coming soon. But depending on where you live, you may be watering your lawn year-round (you lucky, warm-weather readers). So you might be interested in the latest from Irrigreen: “digital smart sprinklers designed to reinvent irrigation.

” They’re also said to cut water use by more than half, eliminating water waste (from the imperfect sprinkler that waters your driveway, for instance). And of course, spring and summer will return soon enough for us folks currently enjoying the autumn leaves and getting ready for snow. Irrigreen , based in California and Minnesota, introduced its 2.

0 system in 2021. Recently, they unveiled XP , a fancier name for system 3. 0, the “industry’s most advanced robotic sprinkler system yet.

” Irrigreen systems are built using inkjet printing technology to digitally control water placement. In other words, they’re much better than your typical in-ground system or method of moving the hose around your yard. The system “prints” water on your yard exactly where it’s needed, reducing water use by 50%, the company says.

Irrigreen CEO Shawn Dyer says XP has launched across the United States. The leading locations are in Texas and California (where it’s 70-plus degrees Fahrenheit in mid-October). Most installations are residential, but commercial and municipal projects are on the horizon.

MORE FOR YOU Juan Soto Contract Rejection Could Make Orioles A Better Buy Than Nationals Aruba Dining Guide: The Hottest Restaurants For 2023 Ellen Foley Performs Career-Spanning NYC Show, Pays Tribute To Meat Loaf And Jim Steinman Dyer says the company is seeing high numbers of Do It Yourself-inclined homeowners designing their own irrigation system using Irrigreen’s innovative online tool. “The tool lets you see a Google Earth view of your home and ‘place’ digital heads in the yard to see how many you need for full coverage. We can also look back at three years of rainfall and temperature data to determine how much water the project will save each year compared to a traditional mechanical system.

” Irrigreen CEO Shane Dyer Irrigreen Buy it must be a pain to install. Nope, Dyer says. “Installing an Irrigreen digital sprinkler system is much simpler for a DIYer or a landscape contractor because a typical yard needs only five sprinkler heads versus 40 sprinkler heads with a traditional mechanical system.

“This also means 80% less trenching and PVC piping, making the job about three times faster to install. Additionally, there is no need for traditional automatic valves, which saves even more time and eliminates a mechanical component that can fail or leak. Irrigreen is a much simpler irrigation system.

” For those who already have an in-ground system: Dyer says 80% of his business is retrofitting existing sprinkler systems to use Irrigreen’s digital sprinkler heads. “This speeds up the install, as much the existing piping can be reused. In almost all cases, the old sprinkler heads are just capped off and not removed so the yard does not need to be unnecessarily dug up.

” The 50% water savings with the Irrigreen system is backed by science, Dyer says. The Center for Irrigation Technology at Fresno State in California did a study on Irrigreen’s digital heads versus traditional mechanical sprinkler head technology and found that for the same soil moisture, Irrigreen saved about 40% of water used, the company notes. “That’s just water savings from Irrigreen’s water printing technology with the digital heads,” the CEO says.

“When we add in the water savings from Irrigreen’s Internet weather-based irrigation system, we get to over 50% savings” based on another California study . That savings means lower water bills and conserving water resources at a time when drought is threatening more and more of the country, Dyer says. MORE FROM FORBES Global Warming Will Fuel More Frequent, Severe And Longer-Lasting Droughts, Study Finds By Madeline Halpert Irigreen has been around since 2014 and holds 35 patents on inkjet tech.

The company still considers itself as a startup (growing 300% in the last year, Dyer says). And starting up the system is less expensive for homeowners because fewer heads are needed. A comparison between sprinkler heads needed for a mechanical (left) versus Irrigreen (right) system.

Irrigreen XP heads go for $363. “Our average full system costs are $1800 for up to 1,500 square feet (and) $3800 for up to 11,000 square feet. “The XP heads have the advantage of both pressure and flow sensors in each head and use machine learning to predict and adjust to changes in water pressure for the best accuracy, especially for neighborhoods where the water pressure varies.

” The conventional lawn shown here is 5,500 square feet. MORE FROM FORBES OtO Lawn Smart Sprinkler Aimed At Millennials By Jeff Kart Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn . Check out my website .

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