biSensorTM

Baseline’s Soil Moisture Sensors (biSensors) are sophisticated instruments capable of reliably and precisely measuring the water content of your soil.  The biSensor is like the thermostat in your house.  When your house gets cold, the furnace comes on.  With Baseline technology installed in your landscaping, when it gets dry, the sprinklers turn on.

There are several benefits to this technology:
• You will use less water. In fact, most of our reference sites show at least 50% improvement in water usage
• Your plants will be healthier. Overwatering is just as bad for plant health as underwatering {picture of a nice healthy plant here}
• You won’t have to adjust watering times for changes in the weather

What About ET?

Some irrigation systems use a calculated figure called ET to adjust watering times.  ET stands for evapo-transpiration, which includes the water lost to the atmosphere from the soil (evaporation) and the water lost due to plant usage (transpiration).

Factors that influence ET include solar radiation, wind, relative humidity, temperature, atmospheric pressure, soil composition, and plant type and growth.  On-site calculation of these factors requires an expensive weather station and human intervention. Systems that do not use an on-site weather station rely on measurements collected from instruments located miles away. Another type of controller uses historical, averaged data.

Needless to say, relying on data from different sites or past history is not nearly as accurate as measuring actual conditions in the root zone of your landscaping.

Baseline’s biSensor integrates all of these ET factors by simply measuring the actual water available in the root zone of your landscaping.  So you could say that the biSensor is the ultimate ET weather station!

When rain soaks your lawn, the Baseline controller will automatically suspend watering until the soil dries out.  If it is cool and calm, your system might not water for weeks.  If it is hot and windy, it might water the next day.

How does this save water?

Your soil is like a sponge.  When you put a sponge in a bucket, then take it out, it drips for a while.  When it is done dripping, that is the field capacity of your sponge.  The biSensor measures the field capacity of your soil when it is calibrated after installation.  After that, the sensor will not allow moisture levels to exceed field capacity, so you won’t lose water to the sub-soil.

Baseline controllers also implement an innovative way to deal with landscapes that are sloped or have heavy soil.  By cycling between watering and soaking, no water is lost to runoff.