PROJECT: Carter Square
PROPERTY MANAGEMENT COMPANY:

At Carter Square in Kendall, an irrigation valve malfunctioned and remained open after the system shut off its irrigation cycle. Because a city water system irrigated the property, the irrigation mainline was constantly under pressure.

As a result, the irrigation ran from Friday to Monday morning before it was reported. At roughly 60 gallons per minute, we estimate 216,000 gallons of water was wasted in the period the system ran unchecked. The cost of that water was staggering.

In order to prevent this from ever occurring again, we installed an irrigation master valve at the property that only opens when the irrigation controller turns on and opens that valve to allow water into the mainline.  Since this event, it has been our policy that ALL properties we maintain that have pressurized city water for irrigation are provided a proposal to install a master valve or other water control mechanism to prevent the system from running after the controller has ended its cycle.