Rain, rain go away, come back another day.
This article explains the importance of automatic rain sensors and why you should consider installing one.
Seven Reasons For Installing An Automatic Rain Shut Off Device:
1. Rainwater Is Important
- It’s all about maintaining beautiful, healthy vegetation. Rainwater is purer and healthier for plants than piped water. Notice that no matter how carefully a watering program is managed, turf, ornamental plants, and vegetable gardens are always at their best just after a rain event.
- Piped water has chemicals and picks up metals from the pipe. Well, or surface water has organisms that, while not really harmful, detract from water purity.
- When an irrigation/sprinkler system cycles during or right after a rain, it dilutes the benefits of pure rainwater and can cause beneficial rainwater to run off or seep deep into the ground below the root zone.
2. Avoid Over-Watering
- Over-watering caused by simultaneous rain and irrigation cycling is bad for plant life. It also leeches beneficial nutrients from the soil and can deprive the roots of oxygen.
3. An Automatic Rain Sensor Can Save You Money
- An automatic rain shut-off device saves money–lots of it. One inch of water applied to one-fourth of an acre is 6780 gallons. At rates as high as $4.08 per thousand gallons, that’s $27.66 per cycle.
- The cost of a wired rain shut-off device from Sprinkler Warehouse.com is as low as $16.93–considerably less than the cost of a single watering cycle. If the rain sensor prevents just one watering cycle per season, it literally saves its cost every year.
- Rebates! Many water providers offer rebates that cover the cost of the device before it even prevents a single rain event.
4. Avoid Running Your System When It’s Raining
- An irrigation system operating during rain reflects badly on the property owner. Passers-by don’t know that a sudden rainstorm has come out of nowhere while the residents are away for a few hours or the business is closed for the evening. They just see carelessness.
5. Reduce Water Waste
- An automatic rain shut-off device helps to conserve and protect natural water resources by reducing the amount of water that is wasted and the number of pollutants such as fertilizers and pesticides that run off the turf and flow into waterways and groundwater.
6. An Automatic Rain Sensor May Be Required
- More and more water providers are requiring rain shut-off switches on all automatic lawn irrigation systems within their jurisdictions.
- If it’s not required by the local jurisdiction yet, installing one early means it will probably pay for itself before the law even takes effect.
