A new, smart irrigation system is now fully operational at Crown Mountain Park that can slash the mid-valley park’s water usage by 20% to 30%, or tens of thousands of gallons of water a day — coming not a moment too soon during a historically dry year.
The new irrigation system, called Baseline, uses real-time data monitoring and a vast network of sensors in order to ensure Crown Mountain Park’s fields are watered efficiently. More efficient water usage also means less time waiting for irrigation failures to be resolved and for wet turf to dry, increasing the time spent enjoying the park.
“On our old programming, if we ran every zone for 30 minutes a day, the park used about 180,000 gallons of water daily,” Crown Mountain Park Executive Director Rebecca Wagner said. “With the new Baseline system and updated scheduling, that same run pattern is now down to roughly 126,000 gallons per day.”
Crown Mountain Park is currently the only irrigation system in the valley equipped with the Baseline monitoring system. The system creates 140 different zones across Crown Mountain’s entire area, and each one is subject to monitoring and adjustment. The smart system “learns” the patterns of water usage for each zone not only for more efficient data collection, but so that if the system detects any abnormally high flow rates, it can flag that zone for a leak or fault and shut down that zone, saving thousands of gallons of water before any human even notices.
The staff at Crown Mountain Park were first made aware of the need to eventually replace the park’s irrigation system in a study in 2016 that estimated the lifespan of all the park’s amenities. However, wear and tear from usage dictated the actual lifespan of the irrigation system, and pressure problems and failing wiring signified that a change needed to be made.
The Baseline system was installed last fall with the help of Peer Erickson from irrigation consultant Colorado Outdoor Environments. Much of the intensive installation work such as connecting valves and trenching took place outside of peak hours to ensure that recreation would be minimally disrupted. In the new year, staff at Crown Mountain installed new wiring, conduits and soil-moisture sensors.
While currently fully operational, Crown Mountain staff are still putting the finishing touches on the system. Part of that work includes installing grounding plates every 500 feet to protect the system from lightning strikes.
Another ongoing project is manually fine-tuning each of the 140 zones with appropriately sized nozzles to ensure uniform water pressure and distribution. The Baseline system enables staff to finely measure the impact of every change and adjust accordingly.
“We recently re-nozzled a zone near the pavilion. We recorded the flow before and after, and that one adjustment reduced flow by 41 gallons a minute,” Wagner said. “Over a five-month irrigation season, running 30 minutes a day for 30 days a month, that single change saves roughly 180,000 gallons of water a year.”
Crown Mountain Park is also hard at work reducing water usage while expanding year-round recreation opportunities by using synthetic turf. Staff at Crown Mountain Park intends to replace the grass in the volleyball area with turf and designate the area as a “special event hub” meant to support tournaments, community events and daily recreation. Not only will the synthetic turf provide year-round recreational spaces, but the change is expected to reduce irrigation in that section of the park by about 2 million gallons of water annually.
According to its current traffic report, Crown Mountain Park expects to see more than 800,000 visitors this year. Though snowpack and precipitation have hit record lows this year, Crown Mountain Park’s new smart irrigation system makes a major stride in the challenge of balancing conservation with recreation in the Roaring Fork Valley.