Realtor Meeting at Keller Williams Waco

I was invited to the Keller Williams Real Estate's office to bring them up to date on the new irrigation rules that go into effect January 1st, 2009. Michael Fanning, a customer and friend, arranged the invite. Kim Galvan, Keller Williams' team leader, presided over the weekly meeting and introduced me. But before she introduced me, she had a few "housekeeping" comments to make. "If any of you need help with your micro-sites or blogs, talk to me . . . ," she said.


Do you realize how much things have changed in just the last decade? Micro-sites? How many years ago was it that the state-of-the-art in MLS listings was a well organized notebook? It struck me that their tool belt had a laptop in it and mine still just had a shovel. They knew they had done a good job when the customer liked what they saw. I knew I had done a good job when the customer liked what they didn't see.

Irrigators and Realtors are polls apart in some aspects.

And not in others.

For instance, you may or may not be a prospect for a Realtor. You may or may not need to purchase or sell real estate. If you have that need, you are a prospect and there was a room full of professionals there that could assist you. But it wasn't because of who you are. It was because of your particular situation at that point in time.

Ditto for me. You don't want to talk to me unless something goes wrong with your sprinkler system or you want to make your system run more efficiently. But at the point of a recognized problem, both industries had better be johnny-on-the-spot with the tools and expertise that you need to solve your problem.

We can all thump our chests and say, "We're better at this than the next person," but it impressed me that Realtors and sprinklers repair folks are in the same business--at its essence. We want to be absolutely trained and have all the necessary tools to serve our friends when they need us. Serve? Friends? Yes. I find that a big part of my job is to build relationships that are based on a mutual like and trust. And I know that's what all of us are looking for. The trouble is, none of us know who our future friends will be. So let's be nice. Let's be friends to everyone.

That's what this room-full of professional Realtors did with me this morning. They were incredibly nice to me and made me feel like they genuinely appreciated my little diatribe about the new rules and how they can affect a home buyer.

Thank you Keller Williams folks. Can I be your friend?

Autopilot vs. Throttle Lock

I'm no pilot. I know a few and they love Autopilot--especially on long trips. These sophisticated devices keep the plane on a strait and level path at a constant speed. The pilot can sit back and literally read a book with the confidence that the Autopilot is taking care of the plane at least as well as s/he could.

Now consider a simple throttle lock. All it does is keep the engine's speed constant. Sit back and read a book with a throttle lock and it will likely be your last. It will keep your engine speed (not necessarily your plane's speed) constant as it flies you right into the ground. That's precisely the difference between your present sprinkler controller and a Rainstat Controller.

So, in the parlance of Generation Twenty-Something, your *ancient* controller is dead on with the throttle lock. You set it and it repeats your last instruction from now until you intervene. It changeth not. It can't. And it wastes a lot of water because it cannot react to weather conditions. In the process, it "flies" your wallet right into the ground.

Not so with your Rainstat Controller. Like the Autopilot, it reacts to every subtle weather change and corrects itself so your landscape gets just enough to thrive. This used to cost tens of thousands of dollars. You can get one installed for $995.

A Rainstat Controller and Weather Station is the best way to put your sprinkler system on Autopilot.(sm) Please call 829.3800 now to scedule a free on-site analysis of your sprinkler system.

Thanks for reading.








Doug

Internet Eleminates My Job

Here is a video clip that Google sent me on "sprinkler repair." I had no idea this stuff existed on the Internet but here you have it.

Watch this and you don't need my company.

Sprinkler Repair

Thanks for reading. And watching.

Doug

September, The Foothills of Winter

September is when the weather breaks. Usually. It's a "transitional period" sprinkler-wise. And, it's one of the most water-wasting times for sprinkler system owners and managers because it is still summer and summer schedules seem to be sticky.

Here's the averages you need to start with: The average rainfall for Waco in September is 3". The need for water as expressed in the evapotranspiration (ET) rate is 5.7". So you need to replace 2.7 inches for the month. The reality of it though is the 2.7" needs to be weighted toward the first half of the month when, like today, Labor Day, it is supposed to be in the upper 90s.

So, if you don't yet have a Rainstat Controller (it makes your adjustments for exact water savings every day), please pay attention to your sprinkler's schedule and make the transitional adjustments.

Specifically, I'd stay with my August need of 5.7" until we start seeing some high temperatures in the mid 80s with cool nights. Then I'd drop the schedule to 25% of the August run-times.

Is all this Greek? Call me at 254.829.3800. It all has to do with conserving water (and saving you money) while keeping your landscape vibrant and healthy. The Rainstat Controller is a "Green" or "Smart" controller. It's like a thermostat for your yard.(sm)

Thanks for reading,
Doug

More help on our web site

The Rainstat Controller and Weather Station solves the problem of scheduling your sprinkler system for water savings and a beautiful landscape. But what if you don't want to spend $1k to avail yourself of this new device?

Answer: Program your controller to cooperate with the weather. You may have discovered that your weather man talks about "inches of rain" while your controller talks about "minutes of run-time." What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Please stay tuned. We are in the process of writing a free white paper on programing your controller correctly and continuously in conjunction with a redesign of our web site.

More later . . .

If you don't want to jump through these hoops, get a Rainstat Controller. It's like a thermostat for your yard.

How Long Should You Water In July and August?

Here's a rule of thumb: July and August call for 1.5 inches in addition to our normal rainfall (which is usually pretty-much nil) in the Waco area. But your sprinkler controller thinks in time not inches. So let's convert inches to time so you can better manage your sprinkler system and your water usage.

Rotors, the heads that shoot a stream of water and the head rotates, precipitate at about .5 inches per hour. That means it takes a whopping 3 hours a week to lay down 1.5 inches of precipitation! There always seems to be a trade-off between buying water and having a beautiful stand of grass. You will make you own decision on expenses, but 3 hours for rotors is the ticket to beautiful grass during our hot summers.

Sprays, the heads that shoot water in all directions at once, precipitate at 3 times as much as Rotors. They only need to run for an hour per week to get the same 1.5 inches of precipitation.

How often? The Waco area generally has very heavy clay soil. If you run your system for too long, it just creates runoff and wastes water. Try 3 times a week at 1 hour each for Rotors and 20 minutes for sprays. If you still have runoff, cut your time in half and double your days. For example set your controller for 30 minutes for rotors and 10 minutes for sprays and run it every day but, say, Sunday.

Your grass will thank you and your checking account will wonder what happened.

Remember to change it again when the weather breaks in September.

If you don't want to constantly tweak your sprinkler's controller but want green grass and as low a water bill as possible, consider our Rainstat Controller and Weather Station. It's not for everyone but you can check it out at our site. It's like a thermostat for your yard. You set it once and forget it.

Questions? Call any time. 829-3800.

Can we agree on what is Complicated?

Today's home sprinkler system tools would utterly fail if they modeled how your air conditioner worked in your home. You would have to look at the hour by hour weather forecast, and schedule your air conditioner to come on when the inside temperature got uncomfortable. But before you could do that, you would have to know 1. how long it takes for the outside temperature to raise the temperature in your house and, 2. you would have to know how long it took to lower the temperature once the a/c started.

Let's say you knew these two necessary bits of information and could calculate when your air conditioner should come on and how long it needed to run. Fine, but now you need to have some way of turning it off at the right time and turning it back on when it gets too hot.

Thankfully, you have a thermostat. It senses the current, inside temperature regardless of how hot it is outside, compares that current temperature to the desired temperature (set by you, once) and either turns the a/c on or off.

Yet a few people have told me that setting their sprinkler system by predicting when their yard needs water is simple and that setting the Rainstat controller (once forever) is complicated.

I believe that some of these objectors are really saying, "I'm afraid to give up control of my watering schedule because I'm afraid I won't be able to afford the water bill." Keep in mind that the Rainstat Controller has proven itself in saving between 20% and 50% on your annual water bill. That is assuming that your landscape was green before and you want it to stay green.

Granted, if your grass is in a state of stress all summer because you will not water the inch and a half it needs each week during our Waco summers, you have reason for concern. But if your grass is green now, giving up control of when and how much it runs will be as hard as it is to set your thermostat on 72 degrees and enjoying the automatic cool.

That's why we say, "It's like having a thermostat for your yard." Please call us today at 829-3800 to get all your questions answered.

Links To Other Water Management Sites

This University of Florida site talks about the best use of a traditional controller and rain sensor to corral your sprinkler system and your water bill. The problem is a rain sensor is only an interrupter. It still depends on you programming your controller to react to changing weather.

This North Carolina site touts a program that attempts to inform you so you can do a better job of programming your controller.

"Through a cooperative effort between the NC State University Department of Crop Science and the State Climate Office of North Carolina, an internet-based decision-aide called the Turf Irrigation Management System (TIMS) has been developed and is now available to the citizens of North Carolina."

Again, it still counts on you being the reactor to weather changes.

Populare Mechanics has an excellent article that surveys the different methods of using weather stations to program your controller. The systems that are controlled by a computer have been around for a while and are still quite expensive. This article also discusses the remote weather station that hooks up to your controller via satellite with a subscription service. The last option is the one that makes the most sense to us--an on-site weather station that programs your controller every day. They talk about one that we could recommend if it weren't so expensive. The weather station alone consists of two modules--each costing $450! You would still have to buy the controller, install it and program it's initial settings.

The more I read, the more excited I get about the Rainstat Controller and Weather Station. If you have questions, please call us at 254.829.3800.

Water Restrictions to the South

I just received a postcard from the Austin Water Utility recapping their rules for commercial and residential sprinkler usage. Beginning May 1 and ending September 30, you cannot water from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and commercial properties cannot water *at all* Saturday through Monday.

And how many lakes does Austin have? Lake Travis, Town Lake, the Colorado River . . . I don't think Waco has had water restrictions, but it does look like we would do well to exercise good water stewardship to avoid restrictions in the future.

If you go to Austin's Water Conservation web site, you'll see that the City of Austin will buy it residents a new, water conserving toilet. These are 1.28 gallons per flush. You can see the savings if you're comparing it to the old 5 gallon per flush toilets that we all had just 10-15 years ago. Realize that only about 7% of your total water usage is attributed to the bathroom. It's a good deal for Austin and for its constituents but it only speaks to that 7% usage.

Your landscape uses 70% of your total water on average. Do you see what impact the Rainstat Controller and Weather Station will have on this resource if it can cut it by 20% to 50%?

Please call us today. Ask questions. Schedule an upgrade to your sprinkler system that will pay for itself in water savings. Our phone number in Waco is 254.829.3800.

Leave Your Comments!

Hello, I'm Doug Saylor, the owner of Rainstat. I'm a real, live person that is passionate about what I am doing--about what this company is bringing to the marketplace.


We do a couple of things different in the irrigation business. 1. We give you a firm price (we call it a Promise) before we repair your sprinkler system; and 2. Never before has anyone been able to convert your sprinkler system to a money saving, water saving machine for less than $1,000--we can do that right now!


Please give us the benifit of your thoughts.

I don't look at this blog or the Internet in general, as a media or form of advertising.

I see it as a way to communicate.

In the past, web pages have talked *to* and *at* us. Blogs give us the opportunity to enter into a dialog with the site and with other people that use Rainstat's services.

At the bottom of this blog, you will find a "Comment" button. Please speak to us and to others by telling us what you think. How are we doing?

Thank you,
Doug

Who are we?

Hello. I'm Doug Saylor, the owner of Rainstat. We started this business back in 1991 in the Brownwood area and called it Just Lawns Irrigation. Actually it was called Just Lawns, period, because all we did was mow grass. It's been over a decade, though, since we have mowed any grass except our own so it was time for a name change.

Couple that with the most stupendous news since I've been repairing sprinkler systems and we thought it was time to have a name that more accurately described what we did. So Just Lawns Irrigation is now Rainstat. We named our company after the name of the sprinkler controller and weather station that we install on existing sprinkler systems. It turns a typical water-wasting sprinkler system into a water-conserving and money-saving phenomenon--all for under a thousand dollars. Think of it as like at thermostat, but for your yard.

Check us out at www.rainstat.com and call me at 254.829.3800 in Waco.

A thermostat for your sprinkler system

The more you know about sprinkler systems the more stupendous this news is. If you don't know anything about a sprinkler system and are familiar with a central heating and a/c system and its controller or thermostat, you wonder why the Rainstat hasn't been here all along.

Let me start at the end: We now have a sprinkler controller that is as all-encompassing as your thermostat is--but for your yard. Your thermostat just has to know what the temperature is and what you want it to be. You don't have to turn it on, then turn it off, only to have to turn it back on--all day and all night long. We take it for granted. But your sprinkler system needs to know a lot more.

For your landscape to do well while using the least amount of water, your controller would need to know the amount of rain you have received, the kind of soil you have, the type of heads your system has, the humidity, the slope of the ground and your latitude and longitude. Whew! That's a lot to know and your controller needs to know that information for each zone in your system.

The Rainstat knows all of that. Because it connects to your on-site weather station, it recalculates your watering schedule, based on all that data, every 8 seconds! Before the Rainstat, you had to tell your sprinkler system to turn on the water every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for 20 minutes a zone and start it at 4 in the morning. Sound familiar? That is gone now.

This controller has shown to save between 20% and 50% on your water bill. And the unit can be installed and programmed for under $1,000! Do the math. How long will it take before the Rainstat has paid for itself?

For more information, go to the Rainstat web site at www.rainstat.com. If you're in the Waco area, you can call us to get one. Rainstat's number in Waco is 254.829.3800.

Start saving water. Start saving money. Call today.