The sprinklers were watering continuously and the gardener had shut off the water. Out of desperation the homeowner called All American Landscape, La Crescenta, California.

When Dan Andrus, owner of All American Landscape, went to the home site he found the system that was installed was in a state of disrepair. There were three valve boxes, one he found, the other two he could not find; they were buried somewhere.

He knew this was an ideal place to install Weathermatic’s SmartLine controller. He had heard about the new controller from his local distributor and this was a great site to utilize the controller’s features.

Andrus installed the controller and hooked up the valve wires; he did not have to look much further to find the two valve boxes that were buried. Once the controller was hooked up he activated the locator feature. It sends a special electrical signal to the valve solenoids that causes them to “chatter.” He found the “lost” valves by following the sound and was able to evaluate them.

He found extra stands of wire protruding from one of the valves that didn’t work. He didn’t have to get his multi-meter, nor did he have to run back and forth between the controller and the valve to find a good wire. SmartLine has a built-in multi-meter function, which he used to detect the electrical integrity of each zone. He was able to find out which wires were good using just the controller.

Then he installed the SLW20 weather monitor. When it is connected to the controller, it “talks” to the controller. This allows the controller to respond to weather conditions.

Andrus began to program the controller. First, he entered the zip code, which is used for all zones. Then, for each zone, he put in the sprinkler type, plant type, slope, and soil type, i.e. sandy, loam, or clay. He adjusted the dials for specific site conditions, such as a shady environment. The controller would take into consideration the different root depths of the plants.

All the information for each zone was taken into an evapotranspiration (ET) calculation to provide just the right station run time, and run/soak setting to minimize runoff. The ET data is calculated daily by the system, and run times for each zone are changed accordingly. This prevents over watering.

“At $299 for the weather monitor, and $149 for the controller,” stated Brodie Bruner, vice-president of sales and marketing for Weathermatic, “a homeowner can have the benefit of a weather station for his home.”