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FROM THE ROUGH
spots began to shrink," Piller said. "It's hard to
measure the improvement with a percentage,
but many of the areas we struggled with every
summer that required hand watering disappeared.
With fewer areas to cover with a hand watering
team, Piller felt that they were able to keep
up with hand watering, something that wasn't
normally the case.
The next measure of validation for Piller and his
crew occurred last summer.
"During one of the driest and hottest seasons
on record, we ended up saving an average 80,000
gallons of water per night…that's 2.4 million
gallons of water over the course of a month," Piller
said.
BIG BENEFITS
Sustainability helped sum up Piller's perception
of Magnation.
"My definition of sustainability is implementing
programs that are self-sustaining," he said. "A
wetting agent approach or an acid injection
approach is not self-sustaining, because that is
something that requires continuous funding to
purchase the inputs. With Magnation, it's a one-
time cost, a tremendous return on investment, and
you receive those benefits for 10-to-15 years."
Piller said that Cordova Bay recovered the cost
of their mainline Magnation units for both courses
in just three months.
"An 8-inch Magnation unit is just over $8,000,
so in our first season using it, it was paid for," he
said. "We reduced our wetting agent and fertility
inputs by 25 percent. We reduced our hand
watering, and we reduced the amount of water we
needed to purchase from the municipality by 15
percent."
www.rainlikewater.com
WATER SYSTEMS
