Irrigreen Sprinkler "Prints" Water On Your Lawn

"Um. You sure you don't want to water one more time before we start?" Steve Dellafloria, the owner of Pacific Lawn Sprinklers, was giving my patchy, sandy "lawn" serious side eye as he pulled up to install my new Irrigreen system.

Despite my best efforts at fertilizing (no offense to Sunday or Lawnbright, who provide fantastic plant-based fertilizers), this year's drought has been too much for my lawn. Plus my 25-year-old sprinkler system isn't up to the task of keeping it alive.

Here's the dirty truth about most Florida lawns like mine: They're being serviced by sprinkler systems that were new back during the ’80s housing boom. Mine was a prime example—a leaky, low-pressure mess that was severely compromised by the root system of the large tree we had to take out last year. I was pulling water from the lake behind the house so I wasn't necessarily losing money, but the sprinklers were far from effective—more lawn maintenance theater than anything else. And I'm not the only one.

We're dumping 8 billion gallons of water every day on outdoor landscaping just in the United States. Not all of that is potable, of course, but given that we're on the cusp of a looming water crisis (for example, Arizona is limiting development based on future water availability estimates) we need to do everything we can to preserve what we've got.

Granted, the most efficient thing to do would be to just… not waste water on lawns. But HOAs are a thing, and changing minds so that we can do the right thing, environmentally, at the expense of curb appeal is a long, slow fight. But walk around your neighborhood when the sprinklers are at full blast and you'll see evidence of inefficiency everywhere. Water runs into the gutters where there's overspray into the street. Clouds of mist get pushed around and blown away rather than ending up on your lawn. Inevitably, you'll see where one sprinkler is barely keeping up while another is overlapping another's spray pattern, while entire patches of lawn go completely dry.

It's not just lawn maintenance theater, it's poorly choreographed lawn maintenance theater.

Enter Irrigreen. Based on inkjet printers (the founders have their roots in the printing biz), these app-driven sprinkler heads have 15 holes in the head to precisely "print" an area with water. Rather than try and guess where a rotating sprinkler will spray, you specify exactly the shape of the area you want the spray head to cover. Because of the nature of the head, you get consistent coverage from the middle of the zone all the way to the edge, with the Irrigreen sprinkler adjusting pressure as needed for precise coverage. Rather than spray extra water you don't need to ensure everything is covered, the Irrigreen sprinkler goes slow, dispensing exactly how much water is needed to meet the watering needs of that section of lawn based on the type of soil, variety of plants and current weather.

What's even nicer is that you control where the water goes. Don't want to dump water on the street? Tired of sprinkler water staining the paint on your house? Does your current system flood curbside garden beds? You have complete control over how much water goes where.

Where To Begin?

The Irrigreen process begins with getting a quote on their site. You enter your address, map out your zones, then see what your system will cost. You can either get a quote for a DIY system or from one of the professional installers they've partnered with. Once you decide on a configuration, the hardware is shipped to your door.

But be prepared for some sticker shock. Irrigreen systems aren't cheap. Each sprinkler head is a piece of precision hardware and carries a high price as a result, around $370. Just getting one sprinkler head and controller installed will set you back about $2,000. I got quotes for redoing my irrigation system with traditional installers, and it was about the same, if not a little less than what Irrigreen quoted me. However, I was paying more for labor and less for hardware. With Irrigreen, you'll pay less for labor and more for superior hardware.

That’s because installation is considerably less labor-intensive than with a traditional system. After mapping out where each sprinkler head will go, you dig one trench that follows along from the first to last sprinkler head in the system (with a stop along the way for your irrigation control). That's it. There's no digging out the entire perimeter. If you're comfortable with irrigation installation, it's a much easier process than a normal system.

With your trench dug, you lay out your pipe and the wires that'll connect each sprinkler head to the main controller. Just follow your plan to see where to put each one (though if you need to make adjustments to your zones, you'll have to call Irrigreen; more on that in a sec). Then cover it all up and adjust your zone shapes via the app.

I am not comfortable with irrigation… or digging… or, well, any home improvement process involving water and electricity, so I went the professional route.

Can You Dig It?

It took a team of three to four guys from Pacific Lawn Sprinklers a day and a half to install a system that covers 8,200 square feet of lawn, and that's with replacing my irrigation pump and lake-side filter intake. Without the extra work and learning curve (this was their first Irrigreen system), they would've been done in less time.

Talking with Laura McRoberts, VP of sales for Irrigreen, she expects that teams like the one from Pacific Lawn Sprinklers could install five Irrigreen systems a week, as opposed to the multi-day jobs that most traditional sprinkler systems require.

Your Irrigreen system comes preinstalled with zones for each of the sprinklers, and that's where some of the complexities arise. If you want to save zones from your pre-existing system (I have a garden bed sprinkler) or you end up needing additional sprinkler heads (the Pacific Lawn Sprinklers tech made adjustments to my plan on the fly since my satellite image was out of date), you have to make adjustments to factory programming. In my case, this required remote troubleshooting with Irrigreen itself. The nice thing is, you can get remote help. Lots of it. Irrigreen can go right into your system, see what's going on, and either make adjustments (with your permission of course) or tell you what's wrong.

The one thing that takes a bit of time is programming your zones. You'll need to walk around your property, running each sprinkler through its cycle to see exactly where you need to adjust its spray pattern. It's a bit clunky in the app. Kind of like drawing a shape in Photoshop, but with your finger. And, apologies to Steve Jobs, but your finger is not the most efficient stylus.

But once everything is programmed, you can sit back and just forget about it. One thing I found with the single trench installation is that it required less patching and repair. A few bags of EZ Feed seed, a liberal application of Sunday fertilizer, and I'm ready to let the summer growing season begin.

How Does It Work?

Compared to a traditional sprinkler system, Irrigreen is slow. So slow you might think something is wrong the first time it starts up. It's a big part of how the sprinkler heads handle water differently. Watching an Irrigreen sprinkler head shoot out multiple streams of water, you might be a bit underwhelmed, compared to the show that is the traditional sprinkler. Where's the giant cloud of water? Heck, why is only one sprinkler in your system running at a time?

It all has to do with controlled volume. Half a dozen sprinklers pumping out enough water to make a mist cloud looks impressive but it also means that a large part of the water you're using is ending up in the air, not on your lawn.

Irrigreen works one zone at a time because the sprinkler needs the full pressure of the system to lay down an even layer of water all the way to the edge of the shape. Watching it in action, it's more like how you'd water with a hose (except way more precise). This deliberate, one sprinkler at a time, pace means that, depending on the size of your system, it can take a while for it to complete. Make sure you've got a nice, quiet pump for your system (thanks again to Pacific Lawn Sprinklers for putting my nearly 40-year-old pump out of its misery).

As far as "gotchas," because there's always something whenever you're talking about home infrastructure changes, the health of your irrigation pump is really it. Before you drop money on an Irrigreen system, make sure that your pump is in good shape and that you have good water pressure. While these things are needed for any irrigation system, a traditional system can limp along and look like it's performing well enough (see my 25-year-old sprinkler nightmare). Whereas an Irrigreen system isn't nearly as forgiving.

That said, you can upgrade to an XP system that uses AI to adjust for pressure and flow dynamically or install a low flow system, so even if you have inconsistencies in pressure and water flow, Irrigreen can handle it.

The Irrigreen App

After a week, I turned on "Auto Watering." Irrigreen uses Wunderground data to determine the amount of water it needs to dump onto your lawn. If it rained recently, the system will hold off on its scheduled run. Is it going to be hotter than usual? Your schedule will run longer to make sure your lawn doesn't dry out. You can also adjust the sun exposure for each zone. A zone under a shady tree won't lose moisture as quickly as one that bakes in the sun all day. Irrigreen takes that into account as well.

The Irrigreen app gives you precise data on just how many gallons of water it uses during each watering session. And, while it may seem like a lot at first glance, the precision of the system in general mean you're using less water overall. To the point where Irrigreen determines you can recoup the cost of your system in two to four years (if you're paying for your irrigation water).

The app was recently updated with a more modern look, better zone control and better backend performance. And while it’s much improved, I have notes. The biggest issue is that you can't manually zero out or "fill" a zone to let the app know it doesn't need to water it. If you manually water a portion of your lawn, there's no way to let the app know (this is something that's baked into other smart watering apps). You can't turn off auto watering for individual schedules either, something that would be nice for things like flushing out my pump filter, which needs to just run for a set amount of time rather than more or less depending on the weather (again, thanks to Pacific Lawn Sprinklers for setting this up, I didn’t even realize it was possible to automate).

Also, despite Irrigreen's assurance that Wunderground has some of the most accurate weather reporting available, I didn't find my system reacting to rain like I expected. For example, it rained for hours the the other day but Irrigreen was up at the crack of dawn, watering extra due to "warmer weather." Again, options would be nice here. I stopped using Wunderground years ago for my personal weather data and find that Accuweather actually is more accurate for my area. I'd love to be able to choose.

There's also the fact that Irrigreen sprinkler heads are complex devices. These aren't $20 sprinklers that you pick up at your home improvement warehouse, they're $370 mini computers reporting flow rate, pressure readings, and more back to the main Irrigreen controller. That means you'll have to get used to the occasional system error. So far, I've found a quick recalibration takes care of whatever is going on but it's more hands-on than I've ever gotten with my sprinkler system.

But maybe that's a good thing? Rather than just guess at how much water each irrigation zone is laying down, I can look and find out exactly. Instead of twisting sprinkler heads around and hoping that I'm covering my lawn efficiently, I can map out each zone, seeing precisely where it's watering. As opposed to dozens of cheap sprinklers, where if one of them fails I just throw up my hands and get another, I only have 9 sprinklers, each that reports its status (and any issues) before and after every run. It's a more deliberate way of approaching irrigation and deliberate thinking about water is exactly what we need right now.

Already, my lawn is greener than it's ever been, with way fewer sandy patches than a month ago when the system was installed. The grass seed I planted over where the irrigation trench went in is absolutely plush. What's even nicer is that in a few months when the summer growing season is over, I can dial back the volume on my irrigation considerably so that I'm not just spreading water on grass that can't use it. My lawn's covered better than ever and I don't even have to feel guilty about it. It’s legitimately one of the best investments I’ve made in my home.

Find out more about Irrigreen and get a quote for your own system on their website.