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A Smart Lawn Sprinkler System?
An anonymous reader asks: "I'm about to install a sprinkler system for my lawn. There are lots of timers and computers out there to automate the watering of your lawn. However, before I go out and buy something, I wanted to know if there are any interesting open source projects for watering lawns. I've heard about smart sprinklers that get weather from the internet/satellite and water accordingly. What have other Slashdot readers done?"
I quite agree. We replaced the lawn in our backgarden with a patio area adjacent to the house and some steps up (it's on a hill) to an area of decking surrounded by bushes, gravel, woodchip, and so on. It looks much better and is much easier to maintain than some browny-yellowy grass rectangle (which is the colour most lawns end up during the summer months).
I've held this opinion of lawns for some time; grass serves very little useful purpose. The problem is that it's what's expected of everyone to have. I hope that you never have to sell your house; your yard situation will discourage quite a few potential clients. I've even heard of places where neighborhood communities complained about somebody's non-standard lawn arrangements to the appropriate town council and forced a change.
Alternative lawns are awesome. But if you're ever planning on selling your house...
Love the Third Amendment?
I so don't miss our lawn, ripped it out ASAP. Front yard is all native plants and herbs, backyard is vines and flowers. The kiddies have what's left of the flagstone patio that the previous owners put in... what's left is not a lot as my son likes to pry up the flagstones looking for bugs.
A previous poster mentioned subsurface drip... there were sprinklers in place for the lawn, so I replaced all their heads with four-way splitters feeding lengths of thin drip hose with little half-circle sprayers on the end for plants that need more water. The hoses are all under dirt and cedar chip, it uses much less water, and hardly any of the water is evaporating away before the plants get it. Cheap, easily adjustable, highly recommended. Won't work for a grass lawn though.
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll