Rich Olivas of Silverwood Landscape in Costa Mesa, Calif., has won Rain Bird’s Project PRS contest. Olivas saved 14,690,650 gallons of water thanks to the use of pressure-regulating irrigation system components. Rain Bird made the announcement during the 2013 Irrigation Show in Austin. Olivas will receive a free trip to Rain Bird’s Select Contractor Conference in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, in recognition of his achievement.
“I’m very pleased and excited to have won this prize from Rain Bird,” Olivas said. “I’ve always believed that when pressure regulation is used properly, an irrigation system’s life expectancy and efficiency will be much greater than those of a system without pressure regulation.”
In July, Rain Bird kicked off Project PRS, an initiative that encouraged irrigation professionals to install pressure-regulating irrigation system components to help their clients use less water. Participating contractors could then enter a special Project PRS contest, sharing data about the sites where they installed these components.
Throughout Project PRS, contractors could visit a special website, www.rainbird.com/prs, to enter the contest and get useful tools and information about pressure-regulation. The site included videos, a Twitter feed featuring tweets with the hashtag #ProjectPRS, water-savings calculators and site reports. Every other week, Rain Bird announced a winner based on water savings who received a $500 credit valid for use at their local Rain Bird distributor. Rain Bird then flew the top three water-saving contractors from Project PRS to the 2013 Irrigation Show.
In addition to Olivas, the other Project PRS finalists were Melanie Chafin with Treasure Coast Irrigation in Hobe Sound, FL with a total water savings of 11,818,219 gallons; and Robert Murphy of Lawn Systems in Fenton, Mo., with a total water savings of 13,520,016 gallons.
