6 Things to Look for in a Smart Irrigation Solution

Landscaping services can turn your property into a beautiful and useful site. Contractors carry a wealth of information, especially when it comes to water, that critical element of landscaping.

The right landscaper can dramatically upscale your irrigation plan to save water, money and time. We spoke to a number of expert landscapers to learn their tricks of the trade, and found that most of them rely on smart water management systems like HydroPoint WeatherTRAK. Here’s what landscape contractors demand from their irrigation solution.

1. Central Management.
Technology has advanced to the point where there’s no need to manage irrigation manually. Cloud-based software like WeatherTRAK Central can provide real-time visibility and control from any Internet browser or device. A central or cloud-based management system provides status of what’s going on throughout a site. The same system allows a landscaper to be alerted to an issue on one site, while he or she is at another site.

Whether they’re at a desk or walking the grounds, experienced landscapers need an inventory of irrigation assets from multiple sites. They want to ensure they’re in compliance with local restrictions and mandates for water usage. They know that they’re simply more efficient and productive using a central management system.

2. Irrigation Management On the Go.
Landscapers aren’t sitting in the office much. They’re out and about, walking grounds and traveling from site to site. But water doesn’t always wait until a convenient time to spring a leak or burst through a pipe. With mobile and cloud-based systems, remote irrigation management is available, reducing site visits and truck rolls. WeatherTRAK Mobile provides remote access to controller status and control of irrigation schedules along with alerts to issues and problems. There’s even one-click access to customer support. Remote management is a must-have for landscape professionals.

3. Extensive Reporting.
The best landscapers want to know what’s going on at all times using up-to-date data and status reports. Through features like a dashboard and Budget Manager, landscape contractors can enable property managers to know how their properties are performing and how their workers are progressing. With quick search and filter tools, managers can view actual and estimated water usage by site, controller and station, or see a site’s total usage across each water meter and controller. Nothing gives better feedback than current, actionable site data.

4. Asset Management.
By creating a central asset repository, landscapers more easily track, visualize and manage irrigation assets. An asset manager lets you import images for use in site-specific reports for visual reference. Integrated, interactive Google Maps enable important assets and landscape data for individual sites to be more easily tracked. No more hunting, greater productivity.

5. They Simplify.
Over the year, most properties cycle through numerous different facilities teams, equipment installations and landscaping contractors. As such, addressing a building’s landscaping infrastructure can be multi-faceted. There are many systems functioning together, sometimes creating redundancies and inefficiencies.

A wise contractor will use smart technology to ease the burden of complex, intermingling factors. Where they can automate, they do. They select a system with a clean interface that offers training and bi-lingual support to streamline operations. They go with a proven solution, like WeatherTRAK, which has tens of thousands of installations across the country. When it comes to irrigation, simplicity will redirect hours and manpower to where it’s needed most.

6. They Pass On Their Knowledge.
A great landscape contractor tries to build on institutional knowledge. Experienced landscapers can provide training, not only to his or her employees, but to clients and other stakeholders as well. For example, when implementing WeatherTRAK on a client site, a landscaper can take advantage of the training courses, certification, and online tools featured within the platform. A client should never feel that they need a landscaper on site to fully understand current site status. With the right tools, all parties can help to turn smart irrigation into a smart landscape.