A well designed, installed and maintained irrigation system is pivotal to achieving service delivery, turf health, sustainability and budget outcomes.
As part of his role to reduce mains water use in Council operations, Paul was responsible for reviewing and overhauling sports field irrigation systems at Lake Macquarie City Council. This included:
- Detailed irrigation performance assessments (audits);
- Undertaking modifications to existing systems to improve system performance;
- Replacing poor performing systems that had reached the end of their useful life;
- Modernising irrigation systems on high use and high profile facilities (i.e. replacing inefficient manual watering systems with highly efficient automatic systems);
- Implementing an irrigation maintenance program;
- Standardising irrigation system components across Council facilities;
- Preparation of business cases and submissions for funding;
- Reviewing irrigation designs to ensure Council’s requirements were met
The irrigation system works program has saved Lake Macquarie City Council over 30 million litres of water each year and more than $70,000 pa in water costs.
Paul has presented some of the outcomes from this work at the Irrigation Australia conferences in 2015 (Penrith) and 2016 (Melbourne).
Catch can testing of irrigation system
