North Atlanta Water Conservation
One of Conserva Irrigation’s founding values is responsibility. Our goal to lower your water bill and help you conserve water is at the forefront of everything we do. Whether it is our free irrigation inspection, sprinkler system repairs, upgrades, adjustments, or brand new smart irrigation system installations, maximum water efficiency for healthy green landscapes is our goal.
The Importance of Healthy Landscapes for the Ecosystem
It turns out that smart irrigation systems are the most efficient way to keep lawns and landscape healthy during our current drought situation. Hand watering or hauling the hose and garden sprinkler out can lead to over-watering, run-off and inconsistent feeding of your lawn. With a fine-tuned sprinkler system, you can use the precise amount of water at proper intervals to have a healthy green lawn without water waste.
Why is a Healthy Lawn Important During Drought?
Keeping your lawn and landscape healthy even in drought conditions is extremely important for the environment as a whole. While it may be a natural inclination to let your lawn go during a drought, we strongly advise against it. Healthy green lawns reduce greenhouse gases by converting them to oxygen, it lowers the Earth’s surface temperature (14 degrees cooler on a hot summer day), grass roots naturally filter contaminates out of ground water as it makes its way to the underground aquifers, grass absorbs pollutants from the air and provides a vital ecosystem sustaining the life of small creatures, insects, and birds that could not survive without it.
Why is Smart Irrigation Vital in North Atlanta?
Lake Lanier water levels have been on a downward trend for all of 2016, leaving it at about 10 feet below full pool level. With 52 counties in Georgia at a level 2 drought and no end in sight, we hope to avoid a potential water ban if the drought conditions continue.
Water is not an unlimited resource. Fresh water makes up less than 3% of the water on Earth and a majority of that is inaccessible found in ice caps and glaciers. With the population in Atlanta and the surrounding communities growing rapidly, the strain on our water supply is even greater than ever and growing. We might very well face future water bans which could lead to everyone’s landscape and lawn dying, throwing away years of investment and care as well as affecting the well-being of local wildlife.
Irrigation accounts for approximately 59% of your home’s water use. While low-flow toilets and water efficient appliances have been popular and sometimes regulatory implementations since the early 90’s, they don’t put a big enough dent in lowering household water use. For example, the average household uses 100 gallons of water per day indoors. The average 7 zone irrigation system uses 2500 gallons of water each time it runs. Making your sprinkler system as efficient as possible is a long-term solution to using less water and keeping our landscapes healthy.
Lowering Water Consumption Lowers CO2 Emissions
A little-known fact, 13% of the nation’s electricity use is in water-related functions such as pumping, treating and disposing of used water. According to the Challenge for Sustainability that adds up to approximately 290 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions simply from our use of water. That means we can avoid emitting approximately 1.95 metric tons of CO2 for very million gallons of water we conserve. Who knew that lowering water use would lower electricity use so significantly?
Protecting Ground Water with Water-Conserving Irrigation
Are you familiar with the Hydrologic cycle?
A too often forgotten elementary science lesson teaches us that water runs into oceans and streams and is later evaporated into the air and comes back as rain water. The rain water then can run back into oceans and streams, or seep into the ground to replenish underground aquifers. These aquifers in total are called “groundwater” and according to groundwater.org supply 50% of our drinking water. The process for which water replenishes our groundwater supply in the aquifers can take hours, weeks, or years depending on weather factors.
It is our goal in responsible water use to protect the drinking water supplies from depletion or contamination by avoiding water runoff caused by over saturation of our lawns and landscapes. With a single broken sprinkler head leaking as much as 18-45 gallons of water every time your sprinkler system runs, that can add up to a strain on local freshwater supplies quickly. With our free inspection and careful evaluation of your entire irrigation system, we can locate all of the hidden leaks, programming and zoning inefficiencies to lower your water usage by 40-60%.
Of additional concern is the leaching of fertilizers and other chemicals into the groundwater. With excessive runoff from irrigation and other outdoor water use, groundwater can be contaminated with oil off roadways, cleaners, fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals that can be picked up and taken with runoff. By limiting runoff, you assist in keeping the groundwater cleaner and healthier.
Hidden Water Waste
At Conserva Irrigation of North Atlanta, we realize that not all water waste is noticeable. If your water bill doesn’t jump through the roof, you don’t have a broken sprinkler head causing a geyser or a brown spot on your lawn, you may not realize your aging system is inefficient or leaking somewhere.
If your sprinkler system hasn’t been inspected in years, if you see water running down the sidewalk or street after your system has been running, if you have areas in your yard that get saturated each time your system is on, or you have done landscaping work since the last time your system was maintained, you could benefit from our free inspection.
We’ll find buried and cracked sprinkler heads. We will find small or large buried leaks in your water lines. We’ll find broken or malfunctioning rain sensors and soil sensors. We’ll find inefficiencies in your sprinkler system timer, your zoning set up and inconsistent water distribution. We’ll also find improved efficiency opportunities that might exist with new technology offered by Toro® and their innovative smart irrigation controllers and irrigation system parts.