Colorado HOA Cuts Water Use by 30% and Saves $58,000 While Keeping Landscape Lush and Healthy

“WeatherTRAK provides dependable and verified results. No other controller compares to what WeatherTRAK offers.”

— Daniel Levine
Maintenance Manager & Canterberry Account Manager,
ValleyCrest Landscape

CHALLENGE: EXTREME WEATHER RESULTS IN UNDER OR OVER WATERING

Canterberry Crossing, a master planned community in Parker, Colorado, struggled to maintain healthy landscapes while attempting to conserve water and minimize costs. To complicate matters, the homeowner’s association (HOA), which includes 15 sub-communities and more than 2,500 single-family homes, was tasked with remediating the inevitable issues that comes with an aging irrigation infrastructure.

Not surprisingly, the HOA experienced frequent main line breaks and leaks. As a result, there were slip-fall hazards, along with escalating water bills and declining plant health. During extreme weather changes, landscape ended up under or over-watered because the HOAs had no way to adjust water volume.

“Every mile in this area of Colorado sees variant weather, wind, and extreme temperature changes — even within a single day,” says Daniel Levine, Canterberry’s Maintenance Manager from ValleyCrest Landscape. “When evaluating the overall water conservation plan for the community, we suspected smart irrigation controllers could be the solution.”

“The usability from a technician’s standpoint is huge. It only takes us a couple clicks to make changes, whereas it would take up to a half hour to make those same changes with a competitor’s controller,” explains Levine.

SOLUTION: WEATHERTRAK DELIVERS THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF WATER BASED ON DAILY WEATHER UPDATES

Canterberry Crossing chose cloud-based HydroPoint WeatherTRAK®, a smart irrigation management system. After installing 38 WeatherTRAK smart controllers throughout the Canterberry development, the maintenance team was impressed with the ease of programming and control.

ValleyCrest Landscape (now BrightView) managers can also make controller adjustments remotely from any laptop or mobile device, such as turning off certain zones for last-minute special events, which helps increase operational efficiency by reducing the number of site visits needed.

In addition to the plug-and-play simplicity of the WeatherTRAK platform, the health of the turf and landscapes improved significantly. The high-resolution weather data provided by WeatherTRAK determines evapotranspiration (ET), temperature, precipitation, wind, solar radiation, and humidity with complete accuracy for up to a half mile.

“The weather data is superior to any other smart irrigation controller I have used, giving landscapes the right amount of water at exactly the right time it’s needed,” adds Daniel.

Many Canterberry homeowners have said that the landscape has never looked as healthy and vibrant. In fact, the plant health was so good that the community was awarded “HOA of the Year”.