Toro Sentinel Betriebsanweisung PDF herunterladen (Seite 22)

construction work coming in—pipelines, water lines, phone

lines, electric lines—so our wires were constantly being dug

up and broken. Because of that, the irrigation system never

worked the way it was intended to. Finally we said ‘let’s go

with radio control’ and Toro came in and made it work.”

Since the early ‘90s, Highlands Ranch has depended on the

Toro Sentinel

™

System, an advanced central-control system

that provides a range of modular options for unparalleled

 exibility. Using hand-held radios and  eld satellites, the

Sentinel system allows true two-way communication, so

changes in the  eld can be uploaded to the central computer.

In the stand-alone mode, users are able to program Map-

to-Assembly satellites within radio reception to manually

turn stations on/off, initiate

a program or even perform

complete shutdown. The

Sentinel system at Highlands

Ranch now commands a

network of some 160 Field

Satellite controllers throughout

the community.

“The savings in time and

manpower alone are just

incredible,” says Schultz. “With

the remote programming

capability, you can easily

respond to changing

weather conditions to

increase or decrease the amount of water applied. Think of the

labor it would take to drive around and adjust and readjust

those 160 controllers if we weren’t on a central control system.

The radio remote is an amazing tool,” he adds. “And from a

maintenance standpoint, now one technician with a radio can

do the same work that two technicians out there used to do.”

Since the irrigation system at Highlands Ranch covers several

miles, they use 25-watt radios and repeaters to increase their

radio communications’ range. The standard Sentinel system

comes with a 2-watt radio, which has a range of three to

 ve miles depending on topography, population density or

manmade structures that can de ect radio signals.

Saving Water

Being able to adjust irrigation controllers so quickly

and conveniently naturally pays big dividends in water

conservation and cost-savings.

“The system has really helped us decrease the amount of

water we use,” Schultz explains. “Colorado has been in

a fairly signi cant drought for the last three to  ve years,

and the Sentinel system has allowed us to respond and to

apply the most appropriate amounts of water. Even though

we’ve continued to grow here, and we’ve gotten bigger and

bigger over the last  ve years, we’ve actually decreased our

irrigation.”

The Toro Sentinel could be called a “smart” system, because

it’s designed to help you make critical decisions about

your water applications. Special Toro software links the

control system directly to an onsite weather station, and

it automatically polls the weather station to provide daily

updates on rain values and ET (evapotranspiration) values

for that day. Optionally, this ET value

can be automatically downloaded to the

 eld satellites at a user-designated time.

“We’ve really come to like that,”

Schultz says. “The most useful weather

information for us are the rain and ET

values. We use those values to adjust the

system to prevailing weather conditions.

And now we don’t have to monitor it,

because the Sentinel software monitors

it for us every day and sends it to us in

an e-mail.”

Additionally, depending on geography,

soil type, plant material, etc., each zone

34 Square Miles of Irrigation (continued from pg. 3)

Highlands Ranch Snapshot

12 Miles south of Denver, Colorado

22,000 Acre Master Planned Community

79,597 Residents

25,882 Single family homes, 3,305

Apartments

19 Parks, 60 miles of trails and 2,000

acres of natural open space areas with a

diverse wildlife population

One Toro Sentinel

™

Central Control

Irrigation System with 160 Field Satellites

Young atheletes enjoy one of the soccer  elds at Highlands Ranch, a

master planned community that caters to its residents’ active lifestyles.

Photo: Jim Cook

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