Recommender: What’s your preferred smart irrigation product and why?

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What’s your preferred smart irrigation product and why?

Headshot: Bob Grover

Bob Grover
President, Pacific Landscape Management
Hillsboro, Ore.

“About a year ago, we made the strategic decision to change to Weathermatic SmartLink. It has a model of charging you a subscription, and it covers the hardware costs, so you don’t have to buy the capital cost for the equipment and then pay if there’s ever an upgrade. It’s a more affordable option for our customers. We have 250 sites so far with Smart Link, and we’re going to make a big push for virtually every site. It’s all online, and once you get the product installed, you never have to go access the controller again. It also has an on-site weather station. It’s very accurate on the rain close by. We have the ability to make quick decisions on turning water on or off. You also have an irrigation map in the program, and you have the opportunities to tag potential repairs — it stores that, and you can share it with customers.”

Headshot: Greg Winchel

Greg Winchel
Owner, Winchel Irrigation
Grandville, Mich.

“(We use) drip irrigation because it reduces water waste and delivers the water to the root zone of plantings where they need it the most. We also use pressure-regulating sprinklers, which deliver water out of the sprinkler and nozzle at the exact pressure the engineer designed them to in order to spray water uniformly and evenly across the entire spray pattern. This reduces the amount of run time required to apply the correct amount of water to the lawn. Finally, we use weather-based timers, which are irrigation controllers that connect to Wi-Fi and download local weather data to change the run times for irrigation zones based on real-time data.”

Headshot: Ryan Kremsreiter

Ryan Kremsreiter
Commercial services & WaterSmart account manager, Grapids Irrigation
Grand Rapids, Mich.

“Grapids Irrigation has chosen Hydrawise as the Smart Controller of choice. Hunter/Hydrawise offers dependable and durable hardware for inside/outside and for residential and commercial settings. Our customers have told us that the app is easy to use and easy to navigate. They also like the features with the flow sensor option, which allows for leak detection. Hunter offers various controller options as well as technical assistance that you can rely on, which is beneficial to an irrigation contractor during a busy season. Hunter also provides multiple training options and the ability to create work orders, which can be scheduled thus giving us quicker response to alerts or repairs needed. These benefits allow us to provide new choices for the technological savvy consumer and improve our response time and accuracy with each repair needed, creating a win-win for customers and contractors.”