Most irrigation systems are set by time and date, they typically run three days a week, at a certain hour, for a certain amount of time each night. Duffy says this method is inefficient. For example, the lawn may not need watering one particular night in case it had rained earlier that day, but since it was set, it will be watered anyway. This is where the ExactET weather system really comes in handy. 

The ExactET irrigation system works with smart weather-based technology as well as soil analysis, to ensure your lawn is being watered accordingly.

Calgary possesses four of the company’s weather stations that monitor and collect real-time weather data for each part of the city. These stations are very specific, taking into account all the factors needed in making an informative lawn-watering decision. The information is then sent to the paging system where the data is automatically collected and analyzed. The data is broadcasted every hour to the Rain Bird ET Manager (ETM) using the national wireless paging network.

The ETM is installed right next to your existing irrigation system. It receives the weather data and uses the site-specific information to determine how much moisture is needed for the landscape and then tells your irrigation system when the time is right to turn on, based on user-set levels. Healthier landscapes are the result of deep and less frequent watering. Duffy says it’s somewhat like the way a car works, the ETM would say when it’s “time to put gas in the can.”

A regular irrigation system runs on an average of 60 to 65 times in a season (May through September) while ExactET will only run somewhere in the high-20s to the low-30s, explains Duffy.
The company was started three years ago. The first year was spent running tests and the second, selling and installing commercially. They now have 166 units installed in over ten different cities throughout Canada and parts of the U.S.

A few of their Calgary locations include Beattie Homes’ head office, Springhill Gardens Condominiums developed by CRESI, Emerald Management and Realty’s The Renaissance Condominiums and The Peaks Condominiums, Chelsea Station Condominiums and Inglewood Village Condominiums by Rancho Realty, and Springside Villas Condominiums.

“It saves a lot of water and it saves a lot of money … it’s also the right thing to do … we are planning to use it in all of our condominium projects from now on,” says Bill Beattie, president and CEO of Beattie homes.

In addition to residential, ExactET provides services to a quite a few institutional and commercial areas around Calgary including shopping centres such as Ivanhoe Cambridge’s SouthCentre, Sunridge, and Deerfoot malls, as well as Cadillac Fairview’s Chinook Centre.

The initial installation cost of this system depends on the size of the property and irrigation system, Duffy explains. An average-sized condominium with a single irrigation controller will generally cost around $3,000 to install and activate, with a $200 annual fee for the weather service feed. After one or two years, the amount of money you save on the system pays for the system itself; the rest is just future savings, he says.

Prior to the installation of ExactET, Inglewood Grove Condominiums were using close to nine million litres of water a year. In 2007 they used around four million litres of water saving 55 per cent of water consumption and more than $7,000 in their first year of using ExactET.

“We are very proud of the exceptional results that we have been able to achieve in the past two years—passing along an average 40 per cent in water cost savings to our clients is quite amazing,” says Duffy.

Besides saving money, ExactET is also a time-saver. It minimizes the need for personal irrigation management such as maintenance by eliminating predetermined operating schedules. Duffy says that when vandals know what time the system will be on they can make plans for destruction. “We set so you can forget,” is one of the company’s mottos—meaning condominium and single-family homeowners can save time by not worrying about when to set the system.

Recent studies show that only one per cent of the world’s water supply is fit for human consumption, 85 per cent of that is used for irrigation, and over-watering wastes 60 per cent of irrigation water. Duffy says it’s time we decreased our carbon footprint by reconsidering the way we water our lawns. 

California, one of North America’s leaders in environmental consciousness, according to Duffy, may be making a legislative decision to make this system mandatory by the year 2010 or 2011. “Irrigation is such a huge user of our greatest resource,” he says, adding he feels ExactET irrigation system is critical to the preservation of our environment. Even with record high temperatures this past July, an analysis of ten typical small to large commercial customers shows the system saved them and the City of Calgary more than 20 million litres of water. “This is something simple that can be solved,” says Duffy. CL