College Cuts Its Water Window in Half by Deploying OptiFlow
“Adding OptiFlow to the WeatherTRAK smart water management system, enabled maintenance to optimize the water that was flowing through seven controllers and 120 valves supplied by a single 6” POC, and helped us condense the water window from two days to one.”
— Joe Jackson
Resource Management/Smart Technology Specialist,
Sprinkler Supply Company
Challenge: Lack of Visibility into Water Flow
Last year, the landscape maintenance crew at Davis Technical College struggled with efficiently scheduling water delivery. At that time, the college had to schedule some of its controllers on odd days and others on even days to fit all the irrigation into a reasonable water window. With no visibility into the water system, the crew had no way to know it was running too many valves at once, which caused an unacceptable drop in water pressure.
Solution: Upgrading an Existing WeatherTRAK System with OptiFlow Took the Pain Out of Scheduling
With students coming and going, staying within specific water windows was important to keep sidewalks and other heavily traveled walkways safe and dry. WeatherTRAK Central is cloud-based software solution that provides real-time visibility and control into one or thousands of smart irrigation controllers. It was designed to manage, calculate and measure water use so the right amount of water is delivered based on soil and weather conditions. WeatherTRAK with OptiFlow helps irrigators manage restrictive water windows from the cloud to keep irrigation running as close to capacity as possible.
In addition, OptiFlow allows multiple WeatherTRAK irrigation controllers to communicate, automatically coordinate and regulate flow levels. It can remotely manage irrigation controllers as a single unit. With more control and visibility over water usage via real-time alerts, issues can be solved immediately, before costs escalate.
With OptiFlow, the landscape maintenance workers were able to:
- Reduce water window times via automatic optimization of flow rates
- Save time and man-hours with reliable, automated water window management
- Manage the system remotely from any browser and provide workers with a mobile application for in-field maintenance duties
- Stay in compliance with water restrictions
- Gain visibility into water usage, budget and site configurations across the site
- Receive real-time flow alert notifications
“OptiFlow is the most exciting product we’ve released since WeatherTRAK, our award-winning irrigation controller,” explains Chris Spain, HydroPoint co-founder and CEO. “We designed the solution for large sites with complicated flow and restrictive water windows.”