#208 - IrriVoyeurism

Today's topic, irrigation voyeurism.

According to the dictionary, voyeurism is the practice of gaining pleasure or satisfaction from observing something that is normally private.

Now, before your mind goes somewhere strange, hear me out.

I think we all need a new word, not voyeurism anymore.

Erivoyeurism.

This is the art of understanding irrigation systems simply by observing its effects without ever touching the controller.

For as long as irrigation has existed, there has been one problem.

If you wanted to know what a sprinkler system was doing, you almost always needed to access the controller.

How many days a week is it watering? How long are the run times? Did somebody change the schedule? Is the rain sensor actually working? Without the controller, you're mostly guessing.

But I think we've entered a completely different era.

It might not be totally here yet, but we are on the cusp of it.

Because for the first time, You can understand almost everything about an irrigation system without ever touching the controller.

This could be your neighbor's irrigation system.

This could be an irrigation system down the street.

Or this could be an irrigation system on the other side of the country.

All you have to do, can you guess? Anybody out there in podcast land want to take a guess? All you have to do is

quietly,

is quietly drop a soil moisture sensor into the landscape.

That's it.

Think about that for a second.

The soil becomes the diary of the irrigation system.

Every irrigation event leaves a signature, a fingerprint.

You can see exactly when the soil gets wet.

You can estimate how long the irrigation ran.

You can see how quickly the soil dries afterward.