Pollution Water: Saving Florida Water

I received an email today from a forum/networking thing I belong to.
The whole question was rating St. Augustine grass as a "drought tolerant" plant species.
Give me, and the State of Florida an f###ing break! Here's my response:


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I have to wonder if the “drought tolerance” of St. Augustine grass is the real question on this thread.

Shouldn’t the question be “why do we care how drought tolerant St. Augustine is, let’s use less water/fertilizer/pesticide?”

Other than obsessed HOA’s, whose ordinances can be changed using legislation, the whole point is using less water/fertilizer/pestacide. Right?

How about preventing HOA’s mandating St. Augustine? I’m a certified commercial CID. I could design an efficient system to water my Bahia grass and install the system myself.

But why? For the neighbors? For the good of Florida? I don’t understand why “Florida” grass is such a bad thing.

When it rains my Bahia grass is green. In the dry spring it’s brown, but then it greens up and grows like crazy in the summer. A natural process.

I use some Netafim drip on my flowers, and only when they droop.

Where did this idea come from that your yard has to be as green as the water it’s polluting, 24/7/365?

Sorry to beat a “dead horse”, but it comes from builders selling the “tropical wonders” of Florida to snowbirds.

When I lived on Casey Key (barrier island south of Sarasota) I’d watch landscape workers drop spreading fertilizer along the seawall, where the St. Augustine grew right up to the 18” concrete divider between the “Winter Home” yard and the inter-coastal waterway, with the nitrogen/pestacide “machine-gunning” the water of the Snook habitat.

It’s not the grass that’s the problem, it’s our lack of backbone in telling residents “it’s not your water, it’s our water, and you have no rights to it.”

At the point we are now, with half of the reefs in the Keys and the Bahamas either dead or dying, it’s time to get tribal.

St. Augustine drought tolerance is less of a problem than our idea of what “Florida” is.

We solve that, we solve it all.

Replace a lawn irrigation sprinkler system timer/controller

Hey Craig, I installed the clock today, a modular ESP-LX Rainbird, everything went well, but when I tried to run the system, a message came up saying that the master solenoid was open and listed about 6 others also as being opened. We think the original box was fried due to a near-by lightening strike, could this be the cause? Any input on how to go from here would be greatly appreciated. Walter

Hi Walter. I'm not on-site, but my guess is that that the controller is fine. It is RARE that you received a controller "out of the box" that was defective (it does happen, but almost never). I think that you may have inserted the common wire in the wrong spot. Make sure that you did not insert the wire into the slot marked "MV" (master valve). Generally, if all the wires read "open", it is a common wire problem. However, this is what I don't know:
1.Have you "ohm'd " the wires? Solenoids generally read between 20-60 ohms. Rain Bird solenoids read higher, at 54 ohms. Still, after 60 ohms, they will not work either. Since the original system was Rain Bird (?), I would guess that Rain Bird valves were installed (but not necessarily).
2. A lightning strike often burns/destroys the field wires.
3. Is there a rain sensor? Rain accompanies lightning. Disconnect the rain sensor and read the wires again.
4. Read the material and watch the Power Points regarding sprinkler system troubleshooting on the irrigation website that you belong too :) 

So to capsule this post, use your ohm meter. It will DEFINITELY tell you where the problem lies.