A Word on Water

Central Control Irrigation - PC or WWW

Central control irrigation systems provide a great deal of potential in better managing water use on a landscape.  Whether the landscape is for a city park, athletic field, corporate campus, an office park or a housing development, a central control irrigation system is well worth considering for whomever is paying the water bills.  Let's face it, water costs are not getting lower nor will they.

The premise for central control irrigation systems is straightforward - that from a single location a water manager (hopefully an experienced and committed one) can program, adjust and monitor one or more irrigation systems.  These irrigation systems could be geographically focused in a concentrated area (like a city) or dispersed across county or state lines.  When assessing the different central control options in the market, one factor to consider is what software/communication architecture will the water manager use from the central control software out to the different irrigation systems.

One software/communication architecture option in the market is software that is PC based.  This is a matter of buying a CD-ROM on which the particular central control software is loaded by the manufacturer and then uploading the software directly onto a desktop or laptop computer.  From this computer, the water manager then connects to the irrigation systems through several options:
*telephone modem
*cellular modem
*direct wire connection
With the PC based software, the water manager has the flexibility to choose which communication option is the best choice.

The other software/communication option is where the central control irrigation software is Internet based.  Here the water manager will log onto a website, using the necessary username and password, in order to control, adjust and monitor the irrigation systems.  One advantage of this type of set up is that the inevitable software updates can be done quickly and seamlessly on the website.  The PC based version requires that any software updates be provided on CD-ROMs shipped by the manufacturer and then loaded onto the PC.

Another aspect to keep in mind with the Internet based central control system is that the water manager does not have any sort of flexibility for communicating from the central control location to the irrigation systems.  This may or may not be a disadvantage.  The communication process is maintained and provided by the central control manufacturer as a part of the website that it also maintains.  The communication method is most likely a paging process or a cellular modem type method.