SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: https://read.epgmediallc.com/i/1282804
I R R I G AT I O N A N D W AT E R M A N A G E M E N T 29 September 2020 | SportsField Management sportsfieldmanagementonline.com tional opportunities available online now that were not there a few years ago. Check with your profes- sional associations and see what they have to offer. In addition to education, your professional associa- tions are involved in advocacy for your industry, and becoming a member helps make sure you have a voice at the table when codes and policies that affect your profession are discussed and created. SFM: What recommendations do you have regarding proper irrigation scheduling for sports fields? TEMPLE: Scheduling irrigation on sports fields can be very complicated. Not only do you have to schedule based on the field water require- ments, irrigation performance, soils and plant root zone depth, you have to consider the field usage and maintenance requirements. If the field has lights, it could be in use until late at night, and maintenance may have to start early the next morning, leaving little time to irrigate. All of these factors are pieces of the scheduling puzzle, and they will vary from field to field. Therefore, knowing as much about your field and irrigation system as possible is critical. The irrigation system performance has a big impact on the irrigation schedule. A system with low distribution uniformity (how evenly water is applied to the field) will have to run much longer to provide adequate water to the entire field than a system with a high uniformity. This makes it harder to work irrigation into narrow watering windows. SFM: For those who are using smart irriga- tion technologies and/or practicing proper water conservation on the athletic fields (and the other grounds they manage), how should they go about sharing that information with their superiors, the public, and other sports field managers to help spread the message regarding the benefits of smart irrigation? TEMPLE: With the WiFi-connected and Cloud- based control systems that are available today, there is a wealth of information collected and waiting to be used. Irrigation water use infor- mation is at your fingertips. If your system has a flow meter on it, you have real data. If you do not have a flow meter, you can run each irrigation zone for 10 minutes and record the water meter reading before and after running the zone. Divide the total gallons used by 10 and you know the flow rate of your zone. Most smart controllers allow you to program each zone's flow rate. By doing this, you have relatively accurate water use data. Couple this with the ability to have weather data and zone-level operation frequency and time, and you can demonstrate how effective you are a managing water compared to a standard controller operating for set times on set days. The main key is the availability of data with smart irrigation. Data drives everything these days, and irrigation is no exception. This data is your main tool in being a better water manager and commu- nicating your results to others. SFM