New Efficient Technology for Home Water Conservation

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Cathi Pare, City of Santa Barbara Water Resources Department speaking to you for expertvillage.com. We've been talking about ways to check for water leaks to be more conservation minded in your house and more water efficient overall. One of the biggest things you can do is utilize the new technologies that are out there. We discussed the technologies for the hot water recirculating. We've talked about the RO pump for in your kitchen but now we are talking about outside with your irrigation controller. Irrigation uses twice as much of water that you use inside you are using in your landscape. One of the things we have out here now is there are water rings shut offs that you connect to your clock that connect up to the roof and when it rains it gets a little bit of water that you can measure, I unusually put about a quarter of an inch, and it will turn your clock off until it dries out and it is time to water again. It saves you from running out in the rain at 2:00 in the morning. There is what is also called smart controllers. They are the latest and greatest. They are out in the market now. They use satellite weather data to actually measure how much water your garden needs in your neighborhood. It's not just an arbitrary, I think I'll water on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It will actually water because it is hot, because it is windy it will increase. Say you had fog, it will water it less. They are a great technology. If you don't have one of those yet, you still have a really good efficiency controller. This one has the really advanced feature of the water budget that we spoke about earlier. You do want to make sure that all of your controllers every year that you check and make sure that you put a new battery in. This actually says it only good through 2004. It's 2007 and I think it's time to change this battery. If we don't change it and the power goes out for any length of time, the clock will have a default setting. They don't want your landscape to dry and if it gets over watered, they are not paying the water bill. So what this is going to do, the majority of clocks will water every day for 10 minutes on every station. It will double your water bill. It will waste the water in the landscape. Some of your plants, especially those nice water efficient ones that you have out all along here, they'll suffer. They don't like the extra water and you'll suffer when you get your bill. So a couple of things to remember is to use your water budget feature, check your water agency website. If you live in Santa Barbara, you can go to sbwater.org. They'll give you the percentage to set your clock for and every year when you change your smoke alarm batteries, put a new $3 battery in. That will save your tons and tons of water when the power goes out because of the wind storms or whatever happens. So look into technology. Look around your house. See what you can do to be efficient. There are so many things that you as a home owner can do to save water, be conservation minded and to just be efficient for yourself. "