Page 13 - September Sun Rays

Water Matters CA NEWS
Irrigation evaluation success story
SEPTEMBER 2015 SUNRAYS | 11
Submitted by Carlton M. Mathis,
Sun City Texas Water Management

This month’s success story revolves around
Sun City’s Water Matters ambassadors.
The Water Matters evaluation team was
established in February as a Sun City pilot
project to pick up a program the City of
Georgetown managed for a number of years
but then discontinued. Previously, the city
would come to a home and do an irrigation system audit upon
request. This was a highly popular program but unfortunately
was dropped when one city water evaluator retired.
The response to the Water Matters program has been
an overwhelming success. Since June, Water Matters’ 15
volunteer ambassadors have evaluated more than 100 Sun
City residents’ irrigation systems. The water ambassadors
found numerous issues with irrigation controllers incorrectly
programmed, nozzle volumes either too high or too low for
adequate performance and broken or misaligned heads. All
of these issues lead to poor irrigation performance, especially
during the hotter weather.
In one instance, a Sun City resident had mistakenly set the
irrigation system to run for an extraordinary amount of time
weekly, programming it for 3,600 minutes rather than the
intended 36 minutes! The error was discovered by a Water
Matters evaluator and the home’s irrigation system was reset
to run the optimum amount of time. According to the Texas
Cooperative Extension at Texas A&M University, with each
watering, soil should be wet to a depth of 6 inches. Watering
deeply helps a lawn establish a deep root system, which requires
less frequent watering.
The Waters Matters team is now working on its second phase of
evaluations. There are 86 residents on standby whose irrigation
systems are waiting to be scheduled for an evaluation by the
team. If you need help setting up your controller or would like
a complete and thorough evaluation of your irrigation system,
please email [email protected] . If you have a success
story to share, please email [email protected].

CPR/FIRST AID/AED CLASSES
CPR/First Aid/AED classes are taught monthly
in Sun City. For information, contact Barbara
Akers at [email protected].

ONLINE: SCTEXAS.ORG