Location: Colorado Springs, Colo.
Company: Weisburg Landscape Maintenance
Despite record-low precipitation, Eric Moroski — co-owner and vice president of Weisburg Landscape Maintenance — knew immediately that the Bear Creek apartments’ bright green turf was overwatered.
“The system was being run so much, it was like flood irrigation,” he says.
The project was the pilot for Colorado Springs Utilities and the Colorado Water Conservation Board Business Irrigation Efficiency Rebate. Moroski’s proposal to Bear Creek included 85 man-hours and replacing everything but the mainline, pipes and laterals. The property had two buildings, two taps and two controllers.
Weisburg Landscape Maintenance upped the pressure to 65 psi from 45 psi, providing 40 psi at the heads. The team also added 6-inch heads in the spray zones where 4-inch heads were used previously, which took considerable time to install due to the height difference, he says.
Weisburg Landscape Maintenance converted three spray zone beds to drip irrigation, added a pressure reducer and filter and ran the drip to plants.
“The beds went from 20 percent efficiency with heads to 100 percent efficiency,” Moroski says.
The property is conservatively estimated to save 163,000 gallons per year.
The site originally had two taps in each building, so Weisburg Landscape Maintenance ran wires from one building to the other to eliminate a controller.
The new controller with a Wi-Fi module was connected to an on-site network.
Colorado Springs Utilities identified the property through algorithms that track when a customer’s monthly consumption increases by 100 percent or more in the same month from the previous year.
The turf soon went dormant after Weisburg Landscape Maintenance disabled the previous system.
Weisburg Landscape Maintenance replaced all the heads in impact rotor and spray zones, as well as 10 old valves.
