A software program enables irrigators to narrow down the source of a problem before heading out to make repairs. Photo: friscogreenliving.com

By Bill Sullivan

Managing your own home irrigation system can be challenging. Setting timers, monitoring for leaks, and making sure everything comes on and goes off as scheduled takes time and effort.

Going out of town and wanting to have your lights make it look like someone is home? That takes a bit of coordination, too.

Now, think about keeping track of about 35,000 sprinkler heads in a city of more than 100,000 residents.  Or juggling schedules to manage lighting for the city’s softball and baseball fields.

A daunting task? It could be, but the City of Frisco is able to take care of both irrigation systems and ball field lighting from one central location at the Parks and Recreation Department. Thanks to dedicated employees and some nimble software, the city can set irrigation timers, identify potential trouble spots, and make sure the lights are on for your child’s ballgame (and off promptly thereafter) — all without dispatching employees to each individual spot.

“It saves on time, manpower, and vehicle power to get to all the different places,” says Dudley Raymond, Planning & Business Development Manager, Parks and Recreation Department.

For irrigation control, the city has been using this sort of technology for nearly a decade. A software program monitors about 2,000 watering zones around the city. If something goes wrong, a red light indicates a problem within a zone, giving a good head start to the irrigator dispatched to effect repairs.

“About 95 percent of our irrigation right now is computerized,” says Bob Johnson, Manager of Park Services. “This system saves you on manpower from having to go to each individual location. Now, it’s handled from this office.”

The system allows the city to cover those 35,000 or so sprinkler heads with a team of six irrigators. “To maintain it the other way,” Johnson says, “you’d need 100.”

Centralized programming also enables the city to take advantage of the occasional surprise from Mother Nature.

“If a rain pops up that nobody had planned on, we can shut down the irrigation in our parks,” says Raymond. A remote component allows the programmer to perform the task outside normal hours from the convenience of his own home.

In addition to controlling irrigation at the city’s ball fields, technology has provided Frisco with other green edges. Using more efficient lighting, Frisco fields have better-focused illumination, keeping the wattage on the game rather than on streets and the surrounding neighborhood.  At the same time, high-tech lamps reduce electricity costs by requiring only about half as many lights as needed at older facilities.

“There are a lot of reductions built around green initiatives,” Raymond said.

One of them is that no one has to come out to turn the lights on and off (or trust the coaches and players to do it). Once schedules are forwarded to the main office, the lights are programmed to be on before game time and off soon after.

“We get a schedule for baseball,” Johnson says. “Monday morning, we program for the whole week.”

That doesn’t mean the program is cast in stone. A phone call to the Parks Division can allow for scheduling changes, delays, or overruns on a given night – all with the click of a mouse or a keyboard stroke or two.

“It really helps us cover a lot of ground without having to run all over town,” says Eddie Camacho, a Parks Superintendent who does much of the programming. “It makes things easier for everybody.”