Tom is visiting his son, sitting on the back porch deck, under roof, doing some beers. It is 90+ degrees.
His son has an irrigation system in his yard. It is an older house and so is the system, so he is in the process of replacing some sprinkler heads in the front and back yard. He also replaced the control box in the garage which controls each zone and the sprinkler heads. The system has 6 zones.
The new control box installation is of course high-tech. Both of Tom’s sons are good with tech since they are 40 years younger than Tom. In this case the new control box is Wi-Fi driven. Very cool, you can be anywhere in the yard, open the sprinkler system’s app on your smart phone, choose the zone you want to enable and that zone comes on. The system is great for testing individual sprinkler heads in zones and / or scheduling certain zones or all zones to operate on a weekly schedule. If you enable a certain option in the system it will interact with the local weather station and control the sprinkler system so the yard and planting areas only receive the correct amount of water. (I would not take that to the bank!)
There is also another application!
While they are sitting on the porch the dog (100 lb Golden-doodle) heads out into the yard, as it happens the mutt is standing in zone 3 of the WiFi controlled sprinkler system. And Tom’s son demonstrates a feature of the system that is not illustrated in the manual, he calls it – “cooling off the dog”. So it is, “the dog is in zone 3”, open up the app, enable zone three, and the mutt gets cooled off. Hugely funny. If the dog moves from one zone to another, well…
Occasionally is OK, but overdone the mutt probably would not go in the yard.
Before anyone calls the ASPCA – this is not done frequently, and, it’s only water, and on hot days it appears as if the mutt loves it.
As soon as Tom returned home from his son’s, he installed a WiFi control box for his irrigation system.
Tom has a dog!
*****S&E*****
Success & Excess 