The Californian company claims to have developed a device capable of watering the lawn without wasting the water unnecessarily. The concept convinced: Irrigreen has just raised 15 million dollars.
Irrigreen, a company based in San Francisco, claims to reduce the amount of water needed to water its garden by around 50%. Its equipment is a little more expensive than the competition, recognizes Shane Dyer, the boss of the start-up, but the user saves 80% of installation costs because, where a traditional system would require 450 meters of pipes and 40 sprinkler heads, that of Irrigreen requires only 75 meters of pipes and 5 sprinkler heads. Cheaper and also easier to install. The 15 million dollars recently raised by the start-up are intended to improve the current process, inspired in part by a computer printer.
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How it works ? An application on a smartphone makes it possible to precisely record the shape and contours of the garden and to avoid losses. Water will not splash onto the driveway. She will stop just in front of the briquettes that separate the garden from the vegetable patch or the plants, or she will go around the area where the children’s swing is.
Everything can be controlled from your phone. Each sprinkler head, which rotates 360 degrees, has its own configuration. And it is possible to adjust the water pressure according to the needs of the areas to be watered because the device is able to take into account the weather, the type of soil, the type of plants, affirms Shane Dyer on the site Techcrunch [article en anglais].
Americans use 30 billion liters a day to water
According to the US Environment Agency, a typical American family consumes approximately 1,200 liters of water per day. 30% of this water is for the exterior of the house. Irrigation systems account for a total of 30 billion liters daily, more than showers and washing combined. We quickly understand the financial and obviously environmental interest of a technology that saves 50% of water for irrigation.
Not to mention states affected by drought like California where the authorities have imposed restrictions on watering and where it is advisable to have plants – cactus for example – more adapted to the climate, even if it means abandoning the good old lawn. green. Finally, the garden, for many Americans, is the most daily, the most concrete illustration of climate change.