Sydney Water (Australia) is reaching the final stages of developing a landscape assessment program whereby individual residential landscapes are assessed to determine their irrigation demand. This assessment is achieved via the collection of data including, plant species, soil types, aspect, sheltering, shading, slope, alternative water sources and existing irrigation infrastructure from each property visited. The result is an ability to provide detailed, seasonal irrigation scheduling advice (only a minority of properties, say 20%, have automatic, fixed irrigation systems here). Now that we've completed over 1,400 trial assessments, we're confident with our hypothesis that most gardeners deliver significantly more water to their gardens than is actually necessary for the garden to thrive. Our focus is now to reduce the 'gap' between water applied and water required by the assessed gardens (and others, over time) via behavioural change tools. In contrast, traditional approaches to residential outdoor demand management have focused on reducing a garden's demand for water, through the use of mulch, native plants, water storing crystals, etc. This approach, in the absence of tackling the behaviours associated with irrigation has the potential to simply increase the 'gap' between a garden's demand for water and the water applied to it. Our first stab at this onerous task has been to install tap tags for the participant gardeners. These provide a reminder at the garden tap of the nearby garden's seasonal irrigation schedule as determined by the landscape assessor (multiple tap tags for different garden areas were used, when required), we're just about to commence measuring the results via behavioural surveys (qualitative) and are very keen to see if anyone else has attempted to tackle this particular behavioral problem (or a similar one). Any insight as to what may work / or be worthwhile testing would be greatly appreciated.
Andre Boerema Program (Development) Manager
Water Conservation & Recycling Sydney Water Corporation
ph 612 9350 6485
fax 612 9350 5942
[email protected]
Visit www.sydneywater.com.au/SavingWater/PlantSelector/
Changing Residential Irrigation Behaviour
Sign in or Sign up to comment
...
I would back up the statement made by Andre that people put more water than is necessary on their garden, its borne out by information gathered by Bayside City Council and South East Water through two programs that have aimed to reduce water used in the garden by Bayside residents. The programs are part of a broader initiative called the Be A Bayside Water Saver program (more info at http://www.sewl.com.au/bayside). There's also a question at the end of those of you brave enough to read all the way to the end (apologies for the length of this post). One was an irrigation in which 70 households with automatic irrigation systems had a visit from a specialist to off er advice on: 1. how to make their system more efficient through upgrades or repairs to the system 2. how the irrigation schedules could be improved so that the plants got the right amount of water. This program was in response to research that indicated that people with automatic irrigation systems lacked the knowledge to re-program the system effectively. Some findings: 45 per cent of residents that were not programming their system on a regular basis. A moderate 35 per cent were found to regularly reprogram their system to suit season and weather changes. Almost every irrigation system looked at delivered more water than was necessary to keep the garden healthy. Most people that received the service experienced a change in water usage. A total of 66 per cent of residents (who were able to quantify the changes made) were found to use, on average, 34 per cent less water as a result of the service. We are currently tracking the water consumption of this group to see if there is a sustained reduction in water use over the coming Australian summer. The second is an action research project with a group of 20 residents to discover barriers to reducing water consumption. The group is given a water saving task to complete each month and then meets to discuss how they went. One of the things we have been looking is behaviour around garden watering. The group were asked to draw a map of their garden and indicate whether each garden bed had high, medium or low water use, they were given general instructions on how to identify whether a plant is drought tolerant or not. The aim of the task was to discover barriers to people redesigning their garden so that it had more drought tolerant plants. Most of the group had gardens in which plants of differing water needs were all mixed up together, so all plants got the same amount of water regardless of their needs. As the discussions around the task progressed we also got a lot of information on what motivates people to water their garden and how much water they decide to give to plants. Those that hand water their garden report that they do it on an intuitive basis, going on the "feel" of their garden, visual characteristics of their plants (wilting) and past weather conditions before deciding to water. Very few actively check the soil moisture, three day weather forecast or think "scientifically" about the specific water needs of individual plants before watering. Through discussions within the group their has been reporting of changed attitudes towards the garden and watering practises to reduce the amount of water used through paying more attention to plant type and soil moisture. Again, we will be tracking this groups water consumption over the summer to see if water consumption decreases. At this stage I think the supoportive environment of the group is as important in reducing water use as the provision of information on the characteristics of plant water needs. The group has met over the past 6 months and has one meeting to go, and I will be completing a report on the program that should be available by the end of November. Members of the group have indicated that they would like to be involved in an ongoing capacity as water saving "ambassadors" to the rest of the community to diffuse the information they have learned through their social networks. I would be interested in getting any comments or ideas from members of the CBSM on how to engage members of this action research group in a social diffusion project.
thanks,
Michael Dodd
Environmental Policy Officer
Bayside City Council
tel: 61 3 9599 4421
fax: 61 3 9598 4474