Thursday, March 28, 2024

Automated city park systems will save money

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Just like the typical smart home, the city of Leavenworth parks department set out to try some of internet based options for controlling systems in Lions Club Park. Early results are showing there is a great opportunity for savings on water and labor. 

City Parks Supervisor John Schons explained the automated systems to the Leavenworth City Council at the June 13 study session. 

“Any device that hooks up to electrical, you can replace it with a device compatible with Z-Wave, which is a short wave radio frequency. That is what Veralite and the other home automation controllers use to contact these devices,” Schons said. “You can set them up to go on, go off at a certain time. Veralite is one we found that is pretty cheap to buy. The controller is very inexpensive. A lot of them have a monthly fee and this one doesn’t. It is pretty user friendly.” 

Initially, Schons explained they were searching for options to lock the Lions Park restrooms in the evening. 

“We contract normally with the senior center to lock the restrooms in the evening, because it wouldn’t make sense to pay one of us overtime to come in at 10 or 11 at night,” Schons said. “We thought maybe there was another way to go about this. That’s what pushed us into researching this. We found this controller. That’s what we’re doing at Lions Club Park restrooms. That is the only place it is functional.”

Schons said they have the right locks to do this on Front Street restrooms, but there is no nearby internet connection available. The controller device must hook directly to the internet via ethernet cable, not using wifi. 

The system can control things like lights, outlets, deadbolts, fans, thermostats. Schons said you can program systems to go on or off at certain times each day. 

“There are two outlets in Lions Club Park and six LED lights with a switch. I put those LED lights on it and I haven’t had to touch anything in a year. They come on at sunset and go off at sunrise,” Schons said. “With the outlets, it is the same thing. They come on at 5 a.m. and they go off at midnight, because we don’t need people charging their laptops at 1 a.m.”

Councilwoman Margaret Neighbors asked about the security of the system. Schons said it is password protected, but anything is hackable. 

“If you have a strong password, you are pretty safe. It is also low priority. It’s not like we have gold bars in the bathroom,” Schons said. “You can take a bunch of different devices and make them interact in a certain way, based on certain triggers you give it. We’ve had this for a year with really no bugs.”

Another system controls the sprinklers, he said. Schons said they found a home based irrigation system was not workable for the city needs. A local software designer offered a program to control the sprinklers. 

Schons said they helped him work the bugs out of the systems, and put it through a stress test. 

“This is a 16-station controller, which is at the pool right now. Each one of these devices controls eight stations, which are lines or zones. It is a row of sprinklers. It connects to wifi and to a webpage. It automates your irrigation,” Schons said. “From a touch on my phone, I can turn off or on a line, change programs or take programs away. As you click it, you see everything connected to the system. There is a main brain which is located at the Festhalle.”

There is no wifi at the pool, he said. The unit gets wifi via radio signal at the Festhalle. 

“There is a transmitter which converts radio signal to wifi signal. It sends the data to run the stations,” Schons said. “This is completely modular and you can expand it. You can run one zone individually, which is useful when looking for a leak”

Schons said the systems connects to the internet, monitors the weather forecast, and sets the sprinkler timers accordingly. 

“On an 85 degree day, I need this much time for a lawn to stay green. It will go both ways, if it is really hot, it will go up to 110 percent. There is a cap. It will give you the extra kick to get you through the hot days,” Schons said. “Here’s where the water savings happen. The real water savings happen when it says it will rain. Instead of me getting in my truck and going to the 17 different clocks and 15 different zones on each of those clocks. That is a lot of reprogramming. 

“I don’t have to do that. It automatically will not water that day or the next day. That is 100 percent savings on those days. We’re going to save a lot.”

Cameras, rain sensors and flow meters could be added to the system, he said. Flow meters would be useful for detecting a leak. The system gauges what the baseline is a for a certain system, so if that deviates by 2 percent or more up or down, Schons said the system will notify you and it not only tells you, but it narrow it down from 16 zones to just one. 

The only way it could be better if it told you which sprinkler head, Schons joked. Schons said 2014 was decent water year with some high usage. He checked the different in water usage between 2014 and 2016 and found some good savings on water. 

“The city is one of the largest water users for the water utility and it is primarily for the irrigation water. As we’ve talked over the years, one of the efforts was to reduce the amount of water the city uses for irrigation, without sacrificing flowers or green grass,” City Administrator Joel Walinski said. 

The cemetery is the city’s biggest grass area, where $2,300 per month is spent on water usage. Schons said he would like to knock 20 percent off that. 

“From 2014 to 2016, that saved almost 168,000 gallons of water. That’s only $250, but that is a lot of water, if you multiply that by five parks,” said City Finance Director Chantell Steiner. 

Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.

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