Water Wednesday – A Sensor-tive Topic
BRIEF THOUGHTS ON WATER
This is a short one. We know we need to raise our awareness of how we use water. I am no saint, that much is for sure. I would like to believe I balance my water wasting with greater amounts of conservation, but I have yet to be brave enough to measure that belief.
I was visiting the family in Houston, working on a magazine photo shoot, and doing a fly fishing story on spec, last week, when the rains finally came on Saturday. The last thing it seems like the yards and grass covered entrances in The Woodlands need is rain. Virtually all newer “developments” have underground sprinkler systems and the entrances and public areas are not xeriscaped whatsoever. Inside the developments, there are HOA standards that contribute to the vanilla appearance of just about every single yard. For example, in one family member’s development the rule is; every home must have two trees in front. So the builders planted (along with the solid sodded grass) two live oak trees eight feet apart in a (roughly) 25X40 foot area, and one of them about five feet from the concrete driveway.
Back at my parent’s home, of course big trees growing rapidly isn’t much of a problem because the yard is consistently soaked, and the trees are buried way above their root flare (a strange habit in Houston landscaping that guarantees unhealthy trees).
So as I was having my morning coffee Sunday, and the rain was and had been coming down for about eighteen hours, and I was reading a fine two full-page article on Texas water problems in the Houston Post, I asked my parents off the cuff, “does your sprinkler system have a rain sensor?” It took a second, but they reached a consensus, “yes.” “Does it work,” I honed in. They took a couple of shots at it before reaching the consensus again, “I don’t know if it works.”
Before the drive back to North Texas, my Mom took me over to the side of the house where a white plastic thing (sun fried white Chinese plastic) was attached to the top of their fence. “Here’s our rain sensor,” she proclaimed. Does it work (it was still raining when I left) … who knows?
If you have a sprinkler system, does your rain sensor work?
Category: Science and Environmental
