#041 - Water SaaS™ using Gallons Per Square Foot with Paul Bassett

Learn exactly how to calculate landscape irrigation water savings, and how to begin offering Irrigation Management as a Service™, or, IMaasS™.

In this episode, Andy & Paul Bassett (Vice President of Water Efficiency at ENVOCORE), discuss Water Savings as a Service (WSAAS) and using the SLIDE method to determine gallons per square foot.

In 2018, Paul developed this concept for the landscape industry when he named the concept of Irrigation Management as a Service™.

www.ENVOCORE.com

SLIDE Method

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Gallons Per Square Foot

Go find the water meter. First thing, where's the water meter, right? Open the water meter, lid vault, whatever you can do it safely and see what's going on with the meter. Is the meter moving? Is it still so a couple of these sites, I go to Andy, I'm looking at the water meter and a water meter is spinning like crazy.

And there is not a soul in sight.

If you are an irrigation, professional, older, new who designs installs or maintains high end residential commercial or municipal properties. And you want to use technology to improve your business, to get a leg up on your competition. Even if you're an old school irrigator from the days of hydraulic systems, this show is for you.

Paul Bassett. Welcome back to the sprinkler nerd show, man. Good to be with the nerd again, drew. Well, thankfully we found hat and to do this, you know, it's hard to coordinate too, too busy guys, schedules to sync up. Sometimes it's hard to do so. Appreciate your time today. Glad to do it. So what's been going on in your world last year.

Couple weeks or, uh, actually let's, you know, since the new year cause you and I got on together right at the end of, uh, 2020. And uh, here we are beginning of February. So what's new, man. I feel like I've been in spreadsheet, Nirvana, Andy crunching, lots and lots and numbers. That's what I've been doing. Lots of projects, lots of things coming across my desk.

We're grateful to see, um, 20, 21. Um, the extended activity that's happening right now, for sure. So that's, what's going on lots of things since when does spreadsheets have anything to do with irrigation or Nirvana? Yeah. Well, lots of scripts. Yes. There's a lot of numbers you have to crunch and evaluate for sure.

Yeah. There are spreadsheets to crunch if you're in the accounting back office of a residential contracting company, but if you're. Working in the field or selling, you know, not always many spreadsheets, so, well, you know what happens, Andy? What I see, especially with the spreadsheets that I'm looking at, it's, you know, we're integrating a lot of the, the weather data, um, and that weather data needs to be extrapolated, you know, oversights.

So. And when we're looking at how to calculate how much water is required in a given landscape, lots of spreadsheets that need to do help me crunch the numbers. So that's why I see a lot of spreadsheets. Well, that's why I count on you to be nerd number two with me one and a half I'm nerd, one and a half.

Andrew. Yeah, man. Well, Excel is definitely a tool worth, getting to know very well. For sure. I mean, I can't tell you, I use it many times every single day and the only way to get better at it. Right. Like anything else is just to start using it. Yeah. And there's a lot of nuances to the, to Excel that I don't have all of the bells and whistles, but I, you know, I operate it enough where it's effective for me to be able to do my work and then allow others to see how I did my work.

So they trust my numbers. Absolutely man. All right. Well, you've been, uh, educating me totally on kind of more of the details of the water conservation side of what you're doing. And we talked at the end of 2020 about this concept of savings as a service and being able to provide that value on the savings part of the business.

And then we talked maybe. Couple of weeks ago about some of the data that you use and how you put your proposals together and what you look for on a site to see if you can save water and how much you can save and, and all of that. So, you know, this episode today is a little bit unscripted and I thought we could just have a more, a little bit more detailed conversation about savings as a service and.

And some of the things that you look for and, and, and, uh, how you sort of get started. And then, well, the first thing, Andy, that we, we try to engage with the customers. We look at how much money they're spending in a given year on their water, you know, and their water bill. And then we try to slice the water bill up specifically to what's being used inside the building.

And then what's being used on the outside of the building. And, you know, fortunately for me, you know, our business has morphed into being able to look at all water usage on a site or a facility. Um, so my team members are the ones that go in and look at all the water on the inside, which is the plumbing equipment, mechanical equipment.

And then, then I look at what goes on on the outside of the building. And then, you know, when you look at it a far, you're trying to determine whether or not there's an opportunity. Do we want to invest in this V via time or money? Is it worthy of us to look at, so we try to come up with a simple matrix.

So let's see. So let me just stop you for a quick second to ask the question. So you get this water bill, how do you get this information? Who gives it to you? It's usually the end user, the client. Um, or one of our partners, our energy service companies, you know, that has engaged with say a university or school and they just, the sales person or the estimator or somebody is requesting this information.

Yeah. So they're looking at it. You know, our partners are looking at it in the energy side of the business, right? So they're looking at energy usage, energy consumption, and the energy spend via electric or gas. Um, and then they asked us as the water experts to look at the water consumption and they want to know, is, is there a viability of an opportunity and on these, um, this consumption, what do they send you?

Just like a copy of the build? Are they collecting it in their own spreadsheets? What does that information look like? That gets sent over? Well, usually we would request at least three years of utility consumption. Water bills. Um, because with any water system, it could fluctuate depending on the year, the weather COVID, I, you know, any bills that we get in 2020.

You know, we, you know, we, we use them as a grain of salt because it's not indicative to what that facility or a site is going to typically use right. In a given year. So got it. So three years maybe normalizes the data better. Correct. And especially in, in, in any irrigation. So we can look at the patterns, right.

Winter consumption versus summer consumption. Right. And I can look at that, you know, we know they're average. Winter consumption is going to be 50 gallons per person per day, um, for a student. Um, and then in the winter, I mean, it's summertime, excuse me, the summertime. It could be 150 gallons per person per day.

So then, then we know that there's an extra, a hundred gallons per person per day. That's being used in the irrigation system. Okay. That was kind of my next question. Is, is this, is the water data separated inside, outside for you? Or is it just one number that you have to determine what's inside and what's outside?

That would depend upon the municipality. And if they have separate meters for the irrigation, I would say we may get irrigation data, 25% of the time, Andy, they may have a separate water meter that allows us to look at just the irrigation data, which is fantastic. Right. I can really crunch the numbers.

It'd be more precise with our analysis, 75%. It's a single meter going into the site. And then now we have to kind of cut and chop that up to determine, okay, how much of that water is being used on the plumbing fixtures and how much is used for the irrigation system. And then, you know, we have rules of thumb, you know, in a, in a high school, for instance, you know, we, we determine what the square footage of the building is.

And we look at the population, meaning how many students and teachers are in the school. And then we have, based on that school, we can do. A rule of thumb on how many gallons per square foot or per person that, that indoor is. It is per person the metric. It is per person, correct? Yes. Okay. And what's, um, just from the shooting from the hip, what's an average number per person a building should use.

I mean, again, it depends on the age of the, of the building too, Andy cause you know, something built in the. Fifties and sixties and seventies, you know, it's going to be higher because of, they have older plumbing fixtures compared to the stuff nineties and, and ER, and newer it's going to, because, you know, they had different regulations and plumbing fixtures.

So, I mean, it could be 50 gallons. Okay. Sandy. Per person per day. So the rules of thumb, you know, determine what we are going to invest. If we see if the normal, um, baseline metrics for indoor water use is 50 gallons per person per day. And we look at the bills and we look at the population and it's 70 gallons per person per day.

We wanted then. Invest heavily into this opportunity because then you'd have a Delta of 20 gallons per person per day. The difference between where they're at right now and where you can get them to. Correct. And so then, then we tell the customer, this is a viable opportunity. We now want to. Go from this paper calculation to, we want to go and now engineer, this thing, we want to go figure out what's going on.

And then everybody's going to invest in it because we know there's a potential for a return on investment or something. Got it. So, um, on the inside, it sounds much more straight forward because you have a, like you just said some of these older fixtures, so you know how many gallons are using right now, per person per day, you can go in and you can audit their fixtures.

See what they have. Right. See what you can maybe get them to. And fixtures plumbing. Fixture is, is based upon the term we use is how many bodies to the potties and nice not to be confused with the Squatty potty. No, no, not to be confused with that, but it can be, but it's bodies the potty. So how many folks you got going to the bathroom every day, determines how much water is being used.

Ideally in the bathroom. And the majority of it just say in a, in a K through 12 or kindergarten through 12th grade, um, it's how many folks are going to the bathrooms each day? I mean, that's not going to change. So our, our goal is to try to still maintain the mission of the bathroom is to, you know, acuate the waste, but do it as efficient as possible with newer device.

I like that bodies to potties. Was that what it was? Bodies potties. That's it. That's what we met at the name this episode. Okay. Not savings as a service with bodies, the potties. Okay. So let's transition that to the landscape because the landscape is a lot, it has a lot more going on out there and it can you're right.

And, and it's, it's a little bit different because there's, there's different matrix. Yeah and metrics, I mean that we look at, um, but it's similar because you know what we, again, what we try to do, um, as a company is we want to, we want to qualify the opportunity, Andy, really at the end of the day. And we want to qualify as quickly as possible for us when it, when we look at the utility bill and we carve out what's inside of the building, and now we have the balance of that is going to be the outside of the building, which is irrigation.

And depending on the climate, you know, some climates, it could be 30% indoor, 70% outdoor. Or, you know, in, in, you know, my climate in, in Maryland, it's 70% indoor, 30% outdoor, right. So you need to look at it precisely with regards to a couple different factors. Um, and, and as we mentioned before, and you're going to hear it in probably many episodes is there's a, there's a.

Estimating program that I use, it's called the simplified landscape irrigation demand, estimating. It is a program, really not even a program, but it it's put together by the university of California and their center for landscape and urban horticulture and you know, what they, what they were trying to do.

And what all of us are trying to do is really trying to make it a little bit easier for folks to understand what a landscape needs and water simplify it because. Irrigation and landscape water requirements is very scientific. There's a lot of equations and factors that go into it. And if you're not in living in the weeds, like, like we do every day, it gets to be somewhat complex.

So, you know, this particular method really simplifies it. And, you know, to a point where it's easier to understand for those of us that are not in, in the world of irrigation management and the acronym or the simplified acronym that, that you can remember that you shared with me as slide, right? S I L I D E that's L I D E S, which again, simplified landscape irrigation demand estimation.

So if, if you have a client out there, who's asking you, can you save us water? Can you reduce our water utility bill? This is sort of the first step we got to go and run a slide estimation and there's really, there's four rules, um, in, in the slide method. Okay, Andy. And the first one is we're going to need the ITI.

What is the reference evapotranspiration in that particular climate? And it's important to get accurate historical evapotranspiration data. Okay. That's number one. Um, and along with that is you, you need the precise rainfall amounts for that given area. Um, the second one is you're going to need to know what your plant factor is.

What do you eat? What is your primary plant? Do your watering, is it turf? Grass is a cool season is a warm season. And typically we're looking mainly at turf grass. At the end of the day, maybe a few zones of landscape and plant material, but most of it is going to be turf grass. Yup. And again, number three is what's your square footage of your landscape area.

Okay. So let's repeat those from the top. The first thing is the ITI, the estimated evapotranspiration for that specific site, as close as you can get to that exact location, you need their historical ITI. Correct. Right. Uh, then we need the rainfall again, as close as you can get to on site for that project.

They're estimated rainfall. Let me ask you, is that daily, weekly, monthly? How do you need that data? Typically, we're seeing it in a monthly fashion. Andy monthly. It's going to be in a monthly fashion and then you need the plant factor. What, what type of plant is it and how much water does it need? And then you need the.

Square foot. How, how much of that plant type is out there? What is that irrigation system covering? What is the square footage of the landscape, your area? That's not always easy to get to, especially when you're doing it remotely, but you try to get the best you can. What tools are you using to capture that square footage?

There's a few tools that we use. Um, we try to bring in the Google earth, the satellite image, and then we will, we will bring that image of capture that image, clip that image and bringing into AutoCAD. And then we'll scale that site to try to get it as scaled perfectly as we can in AutoCAD. And then we measure the landscape areas that we feel are being irrigated.

Okay. And you don't always necessarily have to have AutoCAD. Um, Google earth will be able to allow you with some of the tools that they have to, to measure certain areas. It's not quite as precise, but it's, it still helps. And then, you know, again, as we mentioned before, what this will allow me to do in our team is it allow us to calculate the gallons per square foot.

That that site is, is irrigating. Because again, like we said before, Andy, we know what's being consumed on the inside and we know the metrics there is. 50 gallons per person per day. And then now we look at the outside is okay, how many gallons per square foot did the, that irrigation system apply? And that landscape.

Gotcha. That's pretty interesting because it seems like you could easily at first go get caught up in too many details. Like, um, what type of sprinklers are they using? What type of coverage is it? What does the program look like? How much is zone two running? How often is it running? When really sounds like that's all going to bubble up to the surface after you figure out how many gallons per square foot.

They're actually using that's right. And really what you want to find out before you even get out there is how much does that landscape require in a given season? Right? Does it need 20 gallons per square foot? Does it need 50 gallons of square foot? You know, what is that? And that's what the slide method will help you determine, you know, what does that require?

And then now, what is it actually using? Based on the utility consumption bill that you found out. So if this, if the slide method says, you know, this landscape based on this crop coefficient or this plant factor, um, needs 20 gallons, but our analysis shows that it's applying 40 gallons. Well, we definitely have an opportunity for savings.

Right. And now then we, we then inform our client that we would like to invest into this particular opportunity because we feel that there is going to be savings. All right. So can you share, I guess it doesn't really matter where it is, but let's try to come up with a scenario to try to make this more tangible.

Let's just take Baltimore, Maryland. Do you know what again? Turf grass. What the. Average gallons per square foot should be. Yeah, I think I did. It's about 10 gallons Andy, from, from my. You know, estimations that we've done changes in year to year. It all really depends on the rainfall. Right? We know what the ITI is.

ETA is going to be, you know, pretty standard variable from season to season. It's the rainfall that, that changes quite a bit. Right? I mean, I, I manage a bunch of systems in this particular marketplace where, um, we've had so much rain in a given season that I've had the irrigation systems turned off and we didn't run them a single day.

You know, I remember, I can't remember a couple of years ago when we had, you know, it was the 2018, as a matter of fact, where we had 74 inches of rain that year on an average of 42. And the majority of it came through the summer. So we saved the most amount of water ever in this particular year on this side because I had everything.

Yeah. I'm like, I'm turning it off. Well, so is that, I mean, I'm thinking that that plays back to the, the reason that you needed three years of information, correct? Right. If you get an anomaly here, right. And, and you're looking at utility bills and you say, well, you know, in 2018, you know, the water consumption was way down what happened.

Well, then you look at the weather data for that year. So you got to correlate that, you know, so you want to just extract the, the rainfall for 2018 and go, well, here's 2018 is going to be an anomaly year in Baltimore, Maryland, because it rains 70 some inches. And no one's going to use irrigation that year.

So you need to throw that year out and use more of an average year. Um, you know, when it comes to at least irrigation systems, right. Cause if I, if I went and analyzed 2018, um, in the Baltimore area for irrigation system, I would say there's never going to be a chance to save. But that's not true. Cause we only looked at one year.

Right. And it also depends on whether that control system had any technology existing to turn it off. Because if it didn't have a rain sensor, it could be running all those times in the rain. So it's still used the same. It's still used all that water. Uh, and maybe the same thing could be true. What if, uh, a maintenance person.

Turn the controller off and just forgot. Right. And it went the whole month of July and halfway into August in the off position. Didn't water. And so there was no consumption. Do you ever, does that, could that happen all the time? I mean, you just never know who's managing the systems, you know, from one site to the next, you know, you could have, you know, a school district that has 200 schools and they may have 10 different personnel managing, you know, the 20 schools each and, and each one of those.

Facilities folks have a different way that they manage their controllers in one school district. Right. And I have seen, I have seen that, um, where we analysis and did with the, what the consumption should be. Uh, we use the slide estimation. To figure out how much water that site should be using based on their ITI at their location, the historical average rainfall, the plant type, and the square footage will tell you approximately how many gallons per square that site should be using.

That is correct. Uh, and then sounds like what you, since you have the utility bill and you've figured out what percentage of that bill or that consumption is outside. Then you use that gallons and the square foot calculation that you either did onsite, or you use Google earth to figure out that irrigated square footage.

Um, and then that gives you, is that give you your two numbers, what they should use and what they are using? Yes. At least in that given snapshot. Right. Um, for sure. And then again, if, if they need 20 gallons and their utility bill says they use 20 gallons per square foot, guess what? They're doing? A good job.

Okay. I mean, and not necessarily perfect. Cause we haven't really looked at any distribution, but you know, based on the simple method, I would tell my client that, you know, there's really no opportunity at that particular site, um, that we're going to save any money. It's just when the Delta T's go above 25%.

So yeah. That's really, we, you know, we want to look at something at the Delta T of 25% or greater money. That's money. Thanks for sharing that little nugget you wanted to see, uh, let's, let's get into the details there. So when you say Delta, let's just explain that. So what is the Delta? The Delta is the difference between the, what the slide method says it needs and what the actual consumption applied on the landscape.

Okay, so let's, let's break it down into, um, a real number. Let's say slide says 10 gallons per square foot. And then based on the information you got from the client, again, that was consumption and now, you know, square footage, it comes out to 14 gallons per square foot is what they're currently using. You might look at that and say, okay, the difference between 10 and 14, that's the Delta.

That is correct. And so that would be what, that's a 40% right. To keep the math easy. And since 40% is greater than that, 25% you say, okay, I think we might have a project opportunity here. Yeah. And then what you look at, Andy, you just say, what is that? 40% increase? What does that value? How many gallons is that?

And what does those gallons cost? Right. So, and then what would the savings be if we were to then save that. Extra four gallons per square foot. Right. Yep. So that's $10,000 a year, just, you know, easy math, $10,000 a year is a good amount that you can then take that money and invest into new technology.

And then that new technology will be what is going to save that $10,000 along with some management as well. And you're not saying, yeah, you gotta have eyes on the ground. Someone's got to make sure that it performs. Okay. Yeah. And then say, okay, now that now we have $10,000. You know, a year that we can play with, um, and say, you know, we will now want to put a new controller in and we want to put master valve in and we want to put the flow sensor in that will way it'll give us the, the technology that we need at that point, to be able to know that we can make the adjustment automatically to ITI.

Um, So that's really where the majority of the savings is. And then we look at the distribution portion of it. How can we increase efficiency of the distribution system to help the client reduce a little bit more water, um, and improve efficiency in the distribution side? Right? So we look at all of those elements.

Yep. Cause we're all familiar with a poorly, a poor distribution distribution system means you have to over-water some areas in order to hit the dry areas. Otherwise you'll have. Brown spots. And then, you know, we, I use that too, is when we look at the, when we looked at slide method, I I've adjusted the slide methods somewhat, um, to be able to work with, um, our calculator to determine whether, you know, what the D what the potential distribution uniformity may be.

Um, because the slide Beth it'll tell me that I need 10 gallons, but then I also need to make sure, okay. What is the distribution uniformity of that? That I need to overcome that. So I need to apply a couple more gallons of square foot to overcome the distribution uniformity. Again, I don't want to get into the weeds.

Right, right, right. Yeah. We'll save that for later. So let's stick with this 10,000. Dollar number just because it's an even number, you know? And can we, can we pick a number in terms of what the controller and the, you know, this equipment would cost? Should we just pick 5,000, just cut it in half. Yeah. I mean, certainly it, it, it varies in a lot of an Andy depends upon, and I always tell my folks in the field, where's the water supply and proximity to the country.

Right, right. Yeah. And then labor and boring and trenching and all of that. I just, for, for sake of round numbers, let's just assume it's going to be $5,000 too. Add this equipment. Does that mean you then have a $5,000 potential savings on that investment? Yes, that is. That is what I would say initially.

Now again, if you wanted to, since you, since you're only it, you know, now you're talking half a year savings return on investment. That's really good. So what we want to try to. To help them further because now we know we have more cashflow we can use. So we want to at least try to use the 10,000 or more to really increase the efficiency of their irrigation system.

Right. Because, so, so does that mean they're not looking for a, a one year or in this case, you know, that could be a six month, but what kind of a return, how many years are they looking at for their return on investment? Well, it depends on the client. Um, Andy, I think when, when you're looking for say a K through 12 or higher ed, usually those investments all in with financing and all that, they're looking for it at least the 10 year, 10 year return on investment 10 year.

Okay. And this, so again, using this. $10,000 a year savings potential if that's really what we could get on this site. And, uh, it was, it was 5,000 to install the equipment and you've got management fees and you know, and this, that, and the other, but potentially there's $10,000 times, 10 years. There's an actually maybe a hundred thousand to go invest in this project.

That's exactly correct. You got it. That's how it works. And so that's how it works. Somebody, you know, if you're listening to this and you may think, gosh, my clients don't always have the money or the financing available because the return isn't going to beat one year, that would be a great discussion to have with your client, because maybe it's not 10 years, maybe it's not two years to ask them and discuss what type of an investment.

How long are you looking to extend this? Uh, because that would free up more money for you to, to install this retrofit. Yes. If it's, you're just doing irrigation only, that is correct. Now what happens in our business because you know, we're working underneath of a energy company and the energy company is looking at heating and ventilation systems, right.

He HPAC and depending on where the. The facility is in what climate, the HPAC equipment may be 15 years. And if on the return on investment and if the water project as a one or two year return on investment, um, they'll move those additional savings over to the HPAC equipment to try to get that under 10 years.

So we try to share, you know, those things, dollar cost averaging across scopes or something like that. That's really what happens a lot of times, you know, th th they're hoping that the water at times, um, is, is using so much more than it should be, that, that we can help what they call carry the additional, um, energy conservation measures by taking the savings from one measure and applying it to another measure.

To reduce all measures under 10 years. Got it. That's good stuff. And that's just in that market there, you know, in the private sector, Andy, you know, they want to see it five years or less, right. So public sector, um, it's, it's longer because they can have longer terms. Um, and in, in the federal sector, um, which is another place where we work, um, you know, there are 20 to 25 year terms.

Um, that they engage into these performance contracts. So if we get a project that pays back in five years, there's another 20 years additional savings that we can use to. Help the lighting or help the HPAC or build some solar arrays or something like that. Got it. Well, let's um, do you have any examples I'd like to maybe look at what you've seen for projects where their savings potential is huge and what that looks like.

And some of the things maybe you've discovered that were leading to these sites that were using crazy amounts of water and maybe the other, the flip side of that sites that. You said I can't save you any water. Yeah. I mean, luckily again, for us, we work all over the country, so there's places that we, we see things.

So, um, again, the first thing we look at when I, when I asked her to focus on like sending me the water bills, we analyze the water bills. And then we, you know, we, we look at the water bills, we look at the square footage and we go, okay, well, right now we see that this site is using a hundred gallons of square foot, Andy, and it should be using.

20 or 30 gallons to me right away. I'm going, wow. Okay. I want to, this is the property that I want to see firsthand what's going on. So we, we were fortunate enough to, to look at a large park and rec division, and we got 50 parks that I got the look at the utility bills three years. I crunched all the numbers.

I did all the measurements and, you know, we saw some sites that were 90, um, 80 gowns and they should have only been at 40. So when we went out to the sites, you know, the first that's like double, they were using twice as much or, or more Andy. Yes. Wow. So the first thing that I do and the team does, where I try to get them to do is go find the water meter.

First thing, where's the water meter. Right open the water meter, lid, vault, whatever you can do it safely. Um, and see what's going on with the meter. Is the meter moving? Is it still so a couple of these sites, I go to Andy, I'm looking at the water meter and a water meter is spinning like crazy. And there is not a soul in sight.

You're looking around the park looking for sprinklers, right? I mean, this is the water meter. Where are the sprinklers? Nothing, but it's rolling and it's spinning and I'm looking all over the place and I can't find any leaks anywhere. So on this particular instance, Andy, um, it happened to be a project in, um, uh, in Hawaii, on Oahu where the sitting on a volcanic.

Rock porous under soil. Um, we determined that this old piping and irrigation system had had corroded, uh, extensively over time. And it was just a massive leak of 125 gallons a minute. She has going into the ocean water GS one 25, 25 gallons a minute. Yep. Leak that we discovered. Um, and, and, you know, we, I kind of had a feeling because I've been doing this long enough to know, but, you know, until you see it and you get to it, um, you know, you don't believe it until you see it.

Um, and that's, that's what happened on one side and we found two others similar to that, not quite that rate. Um, but again, it was, we, we determined it based on our gallons per square foot rule of thumb and new, then you looked at this date and you went, okay, we're going to this site first because they're using so much more water than we calculate.

They should be. There's something going on here. Yup. That's exactly what it was. And we, you know, we right away, we found that there was a significant leak, um, in that, in that piping system. So if we, can we take that 125 gallons a minute? Do you know what that is? Per year in dollar? It was $400,000 a year.

Andy, $400,000 per year leak. That's exactly right. And that league. I wish I had a, I wish I had like a ding ding teacher's bell button. That's like, let me get your attention here, client. And then Andy, what we did on that too, was, you know, we, we then analyze the bills back three years, um, and, and more, and then we, we were able to almost precisely see when it started to leak.

And then how it progressed to a, got to the point where it was at that high level of a rate. Cause you can see it in the utility bills, how it progressed. It didn't just break at that one point, it started flooding at 125. It wasn't hit by a backhoe. It was a slow bleed. Yeah. The, the, the, the pipe being system was put in, in 1952 and it was iron pipe and, you know, 70 years old.

And it finally, you know, the fittings are corroding. The joints are failing. Um, so that's, that's what happened and that, you know, we see that quite a bit sounds like because it was that volcanic rock, it didn't bubble to the surface where on a lot of other sites, malware on most sites, even if it's sand, you got a leak that big, it will.

Come to the surface cause that's a lot of water, correct? Yep. So it was just, I, you know, it was just, you know, the, the perfect storm of events that happen, um, that we were able to identify. Yeah. That's a terrible thing to be, to have 125, uh, Gallon per minute leak, it's worth $400,000, but you are not you, but if you're in the business for savings and you're doing savings as a service, that kind of sounds like a unicorn.

It pays it. It will definitely help pay for quite a few upgrades. Andy, we're going to use that money to help the infrastructure of that particular. Um, facility in those parks. Okay. A great example of, uh, looking at the data, finding the site that was, had the highest usage, when you're, when correlated to what they should be using.

You saw that you went to the site, you've found this leak. Um, not every site like that. So I appreciate the hearing, an example of the site that had a, had a big leak. Let's flip the switch and talk about. A site that's on the other end of the spectrum that you couldn't save any water. So, you know, a lot of times when we, when you think of water savings and irrigation savings, you think, wow, in the desert, you know, Phoenix or Nevada or Denver, man, you're gonna, you're gonna save all kinds of water.

Um, it's not always the case. Um, I know, you know, we just, I just looked at a school district, um, outside of Denver. Um, I got the utility bills. I looked at satellite images. Of the sites and one benefit of Google and Google earth pro is they have the ability to, you can look at different years and months even of, of the landscape.

And you can look at in Denver or Vegas, um, at certain times of the year. And you can see, man, this site is not. Irrigating you see donuts in the landscape, right, Andy. Um, and what happens is that what I've learned in those particular climates that a lot of the times the, the managers will set that irrigation controller for springtime application and they don't adjust the time clock.

To, to the T or to the demand, the higher demands of the T in that climate. So set it and forget it, baby, set it and forget it. And that works in some places and others. It doesn't. Right. So, you know, so, and, and say in Denver, And that particular Metro area in the summer, you got a water five, six days a week.

Cause it's cool to seasoned turf grass. It's not warm season. So that cool season turf grass, if you want to maintain that color green, you better water it almost every day. Right? Um, two days a week is not going to cut it. So that's what we see in those climates. You know, that, that, you know, that area needs.

15 gallons, a square foot. And I'm seeing, they're putting down 10 gallons as well. So, you know, not going to save any water there don't invest. Right. So if they want you to, uh, retrofit the site, they're pulling out of pocket because they just simply weren't using enough to have the savings pay for it. I mean, I guess in theory, future future savings will pay for it.

Well, potentially if there is, but you know, what we've learned, um, with regards to that is, you know, w we try to encourage people to do deficit watering, right? Deficit waterings is good because it saves water. Um, but if you can do it holistically with a controller that you have access to remotely, um, you can then put a nice program together to say, okay, look zones one through.

Five, you know, we want to maintain it at, at ITI. So that's going to be a nice, but then six through 20 might be the outskirts. And, you know, we want to push those to deficit irrigation. Let's just drop those down, you know, below ITI. Um, so we don't need the lush green aesthetic color out there. Um, but. You know, we will manage to ITI on zones one through five, and that's the benefit that we can, you can do controlled deficit irrigating and not by accident.

Right, right. Which sounds like you're controlling the green factor. Right? So what you're saying is where, um, office staff and parents and such using the school, as an example, walk into the building, we want to maintain a higher level of green and out in the back or off to the sides. We're willing to have that green terms, slightly Brown by deficit irrigating.

Cause it's less important than those focal spots. That's exactly right. And you can easily do it in the new advanced control systems you can do. It's owned by zone. You know, I want this to be at a hundred percent of ITI these zones, but on these other ones, I'll do 75% or 50% of it. Right. And so now you're managing your deficit irrigation.

So that's the benefit, you know, if you're going to do a program, that's not cashflow saved savings by the utility bill, right. Hmm. Very cool. So I think, um, what I'd like to do is try to wrap up our conversation, but I want to hit a couple of key points that we talked about, uh, to kind of bring this home and the thing that I appreciate you sharing, which was new to me.

Right? So you've been in the business longer than I have, but you know, still I'm almost, uh, Almost 20 years in getting pretty darn close to 20 years in. I wasn't familiar with slide that simplified landscape irrigation demand estimation to come up with your quote unquote baseline, uh, gallons per square foot for that site.

Right. And that's going to be different in Texas than it is in Florida, that it is in Boston than it is in Seattle or any location. And that slide, um, just to repeat again, it was a combination of the ITI for that local site. The rainfall for that local site, the plant factor, and then the square foot that's being irrigated.

And that breaks down to the estimated gallons per square foot. And then what you talked about was, uh, getting, uh, getting the, the client utility bill. How much water are they using indoors and outdoors, separating that out. And then, uh, Calculating the total irrigation or the landscape bits, that's irrigated the square foot.

So now, you know how much they're actually using and you're comparing what they should be using in gallons per square foot to what they are using in gallons per square foot. And you're looking for at least a 25% difference or Delta between those numbers. You want 25% Delta between those numbers. And then you want to look at.

What's the value of that Delta in, in dollars based on their price of water and how much they're consuming to see if that Delta, uh, can afford a, uh, control and equipment upgrade based on the time period that they're looking for. Maybe that's three years, five years or 10 years. And that's how you're basing your, uh, your savings as a service estimation.

Very good wrap up any of your correct, you know, again, you know, if they have the money to fund it then fantastic. Or because you know, now you're basically writing a business plan, uh, to them or to a lender that say, Hey, listen, I have $10,000 a year that I can now, you know, borrow against to invest. And you can take that to a third-party financer and get that funded.

Or if you have the cashflow to fund that yourself, or if the client at the end of the day has the money to fund it, they don't want to have a third party financing. Cause then there's interest rates involved. Right? Right. You now have $10,000 you tangibly could use in a project, whether you have the money yourself to borrow it, or the, the client has the money that they can spend it.

So again, Get ahold of Excel, learn how to use Excel because when you're crunching these numbers, you may want to build a spreadsheet. It's three years. You may decide there's other information you want to put in here and having some spreadsheet skills can, can certainly help. Cause I think to date right now, there's no easy button for this.

There's no enter these two pieces of information and we'll spit it out for you still got to crunch your own numbers and support your own numbers. Um, that's good, man. We will, uh, We'll have to come back and visit. I really like hearing your, your site stories, you know, finding that leak. And, uh, even the one outside Denver where you said you couldn't really save much water because they had kept that spring program running all year.

It's important. Yeah, but we, when we looked at the inside water, Andy, it's 40% savings on the inside. Right. 0% outside right now. So listen, we're going to, if we go in and change out the plumbing, fixtures, something more efficient, we're going to reduce that and save 40%. Okay. But they want to go ahead and maybe upgrade their irrigation controls to be able to manage deficit irrigating by controls being to move the water.

We, the money we stayed inside to outside. So you can share those costs inside the outside. Right? Love it. Love it. Okay. Well, that's a wrap and a guys remember, think savings as a service and a gallons per square foot. Find a project that you manage and experiment with this gallons per square foot. All right, Paul, that's a wrap man.

Let's do it again soon. Can't wait. Thank you, Andy. All right, cheers. See ya.

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