LUCIOLE DESIGN JOURNAL

Did we become snotty tree huggers? Or just insist on designing for the future?

Matiljia Poppy, a dramatic California native plant

California is in a drought, and it looks like this is not going to be a rare event going forward. So we’re getting selective.

This means losing potential clients, who may not share these values.

“I don’t want your values in my backyard!”
anonymus caller

No, that did not go well.

Never mind that they’re not our values. They’re shared values, ideally between our clients and ourselves, moving in the same direction. It’s that whole “be kind to the Earth” thing.

It’s just common sense for an arid climate. Besides, sustainable design is fun and looks great when it’s done well.

Ask anyone involved in sustainable design and you’ll likely hear the same things:

plant water conserving plants
encourage life in your garden: pollinators, small birds, butterflies… they’re fun to watch, too!
grow your own food – vegetables, herbs or both
balance high water use features (like pools) with low water use features
capture runoff water on site so it sinks into the earth, as much as feasible
eliminate toxic substances (good for you and your pets, too!).
find alternate ways to maintain lawns – plant lower water use grass blends, use less or non-polluting electric mowers or hand mowers, alternate plants that work like lawn (kurapia, for example). Use efficient irrigation systems (already mandated by the State of California).
follow sustainable design principles, or at least adapt them to each project. There are a lot of them: Earth Friendly, Permaculture, Sustainable Design, River Friendly Design, Bay Friendly Design – and it seems like people create more every month!

The ironic thing perhaps is that being kind to the planet mainly involves planting design. And that does not mean native plants, either. Any plant that thrives in our climate without a lot of supplemental water can work, as long as it’s not invasive. That’s a lot of plants, in a lot of shapes, colors and sizes! And this means we can almost always create a look that fits your lifestyle.

Everyone still gets their stuff

Patios, pools and paved spaces stay about the same (although we may suggest pervious paving that captures water for the landscape). A shade structure is still a shade structure, a patio a patio, a walk, a wall, a trellis – all the same.

If the drought gets really bad, the landscape survives

After spending all that time designing and installing a landscape, who wants to see it deteriorate when the water gets cut or becomes too expensive to use for irrigation?

What do you think?

Are we crazy, throwing away a fortune? (not that we ever made a fortune). Or is following your conscience to turn down business a good thing? Maybe it’s because the pandemic has polarized everything so much that it was time to choose sides between helping the environment or fighting it. But… the environment always wins, sooner or later.

Please let us know in the comments!

Glitz it up

(c.2004)

Just plain concrete, a pool, nothing interesting. This needed a fix! So, pool remodel, add spa, outdoor fireplace, kitchen, raise three tier fountain so you can see it from the house, upgrade materials… et voilà! Luxurious outdoor rooms and better views from the house!

Lessons

There’s really very little (or nothing) that can’t be transformed in a landscape. The old design is gone, whatever it was – replaced by a sumptuous outdoor dining area and kitchen, new pool deck, paths and garden spaces.
Our version of French and the general consensus in Northern California at least, are two vastly different things. The only outdoor fireplaces we see in France are wood burning ovens. Gas grills are not built-in. And pools tend to be fiberglas liners, not plaster over gunite and steel. In short, residential landscapes in France tend to value simplicity and function: simple grills, herbs, vegetables, fruit trees, cut flowers, gravel paths or simple concrete, hedges. They love tall evergreen hedges!
When someone asks for a French design, we need to ask questions even at the risk of sounding ignorant. French design goes from Versailles to Provence to avant-garde, and currently emphasizes sustainable with insect hotels, pollinator plants, green buildings covered in plants and a lot less formal structure. This is pretty much never what people here think of as “French”!

Mid-century patio gardens, 2008.

Sometimes everything has to follow one theme. Sometimes, not so much. This design created transitions between outdoor rooms, each with its own character.

Arrive, entertain, relax

Arrival

The entire front, including the home’s façade and garage door, got a redo.

The biggest issue was that once you were in the entry patio, you were basically inside the house with floor to ceiling windows running the length of the patio.

The solution was a series of transition walls to create a sense of increasing privacy, arriving at a locked door with an intercom. No more uncontrolled access!

Entertain

Once through the patio entry door, you’re surrounded by an outdoor kitchen and dining patio sheltered by a Japanese maple and metal shade structure. There’s a kinetic fountain/sculpture in a pocket of green, ground treatments enrich the spaces, including decorative metal drains that lead to a groundwater infiltration system in the front.

With the home’s doors open, this space becomes another room.

Back yard

Swimming pool

A small dipping pool with a raised bond beam takes up most of the back yard, with a vegetable garden in colorful stucco raised planters filling in a sunny space.

The pool is backed by a wall that happens to hide the pool equipment area, effectively making it vanish. The wall is a good noise barrier, too.

Meditation – Zen garden

Another change in character, using a grove of bamboo to wrap around a small patio accented with Asian sculptures. A home office looks onto this tranquil area.

Utility space

Built-in storage and a potting bench run along the wall outside the garage in a mostly hidden location. This is where all the messy things happen so that the rest of the landscape remains pristine.

Lessons

Doing the façade and the landscaping at the same time brings up several opportunities. In this case, the driveway’s concrete scoring was aligned with the garage door panels. It also let us add the controlled access entry gate as part of an extended wall of the house.
We wanted to keep the Japanese maple, but we also needed a privacy wall just behind it. The other walls were concrete block, with footings. Putting a footing mere feet away from the tree would have severed half its roots, so we used fence panels anchored on both sides to the concrete wall, eliminating the footing to leave the tree’s roots mostly undisturbed.
This was the first time we really needed to model a design in 3D to fit the parts together. Counters, walls, overhead structure, gas grill, drainage, house, eaves… it was a real 3D jigsaw puzzle!
This design was featured in the Modesto Architecture Festival (now MADWEEK). We gave a lecture, toured mid-century modern buildings and had a lot of fun. None of this led to more projects of this caliber. Lesson: just have fun, do a great design, and if something else happens, it happens. If not, well – we still had fun!
A clever contractor can find interesting solutions. The inset lights in the front path were specified from a catalog, little cubes that glow. The contractor used glass block and regular in-ground lights to get the same effect using easier to source materials. Not quite the same but close enough. The underground groundwater infiltration drainage system was likewise done without the specified catalog cisterns.
Specifying everything is good, even if it’s not used – it gives an idea of what we’re looking for and how it works, leaving the building team free to improvise along guidelines.
Plants, not even clones, will grow uniformly unless sheared. For plants that can’t be attractively sheared, like New Zealand flax, it’s best to plant mixed varieties for a look that’s never uniform – so nobody will expect it to be.
Using plain stucco walls that match the house makes the planting scheme more dominant and unifies the design. Fancier treatments were saved for where they’d have greater impact, like the patio floor and zen garden.
Increasing wall heights as they move away from the street blend the structure into the design, so it doesn’t pop out and loom over anything else. This was tested in the 3D model, and we were happy to see that it worked in real life.

Australian garden by the sea, 2005.

A client moved from Sacramento to Oceano! Cause to rejoice! Sandy soil in a coastal zone! This means suddenly Mike could go back to his Santa Cruz Arboretum roots and design with Australian and South African plants! Since this was also a hummingbird garden, it was a perfect fit: hummingbirds love many of these plants.

Flowers, forms, color… and universal access

The plants: kangaroo paws, correa, leucospermum, melaleuca, red passion vine, sedges and others combine in a rich tapestry of color, form, texture and movement.

The hardscape, salt finish integral color concrete accented with swatches of multicolor slate, is flat. Easy to get around in a wheelchair, just in case. Seat walls run along a patio outside the house, allowing seating for guests while removing chairs that could hinder free wheelchair access.

The simple water feature is perfect for different bird species: the curved part is a hummingbird favorite, and the lower basin works for others who like to dip into the water when bathing.

The patios lead to a looping trail surrounded by various kinds of mostly Australian plants, often buzzing with hummingbirds. All in all, a nice place to hang out and relax.

Coming from Mediterranean climates, these plants require very little water, especially in this climate.

Lessons

Looking around a neighborhood before starting a design gives a lot of great data on plant choices. A large mature protea neriifolia thrived near the end of the street.
Knowing climate and soil doesn’t hurt, either. Many Australian and most South African plants grown in California grow near the coast in their native habitats. Sandy soil, cooler temperatures and humidity: all things we lack in Sacramento.
Finding these plants means going to a specialist, probably two. Kangaroo paws came from an Australian specialist; the South African plants came via mail order from another specialist.
Using specialty plants like this means you’ll probably pay more for them, so the design needed to balance out the real exotics with more commonly available species.
Specialty proteas are better planted from smaller pots. They’ll be easier to establish, they’re less expensive so if they fail it’s not the end of the world.
Working far from home can work, provided you provide enough time on site for infrequent visits, know the area where your design is being installed and have clients willing to work remotely. The site is not far from Nipomo Dunes, a place we used to go quite frequently – and the climate is similar to Santa Cruz, including the soil.

Current situation

We have no idea what happened with this garden. It probably went through a refresh. It might have been replaced with lawn, since that’s what real estate agents do when a house goes up for sale.

We found out the house had been sold when the former owners drove through town years ago on the way to their new home in Oregon, had car trouble and called to ask if we knew a good mechanic. On a Sunday, when our mechanic is closed.

I think they mentioned moving into a condo, no garden.

Patio garden with a view. 2002

“We want a WOW! when people look out of the house. We also want to show off the view.” A major low trough fountain and pond coming off an extended patio and walkway did the trick.

Mix garden and patios

Two patios for outdoor living: one off the dining room, another off the master bedroom. Concrete stepping pads with creeping thyme link the two, passing by a pond and two waterfalls.

Instead of a shade structure, there’s an extendable awning that has a roll-up shade to block direct western sun.

Lighting under the fountain creates a “dancing” effect, working with path lights to create usable spaces day and night.

The original concrete received an overlay, making it look like tile. This let us seamlessly extend the patio by adding new concrete and running the overlay over both slabs.

Instant decision

This remains a record for turnaround time. We presented the concept, they looked at it and said, “Go!”. We finished the drawings and the landscape was on its way to installation in about a month from when we started.

Lessons

Contractors don’t always read details. There were three return pipes from the upper trough on the detail, but he only installed one – three pipes were shown on the note, but since they overlapped he missed that part. In the future, we made sure that we showed multiple views in case nobody read the notes.
Green macaws can be ferocious! The husband got a bird that chased his wife around, acting like Tyrannosaurus Parrot. Yes, you really could see that birds evolved from dinosaurs!
Frogs, especially Pacific chorus frogs, sing quite well and loudly. These people loved this sound of the country (I do, too!). But if frog serenades aren’t your thing, use a water feature that isn’t frog accessible. Of course, if you’re someplace with a decent frog population, they’ll sing anyway – just farther from the house.
Creeping thyme, while quite attractive, requires a lot of weeding. These people were willing to have it done. Others are not: they use artificial turf in the joints to keep things simple.
Morning glories – the perennial kind – are quite invasive if their planting area is not carefully considered. In this case, they sprawl along the downslope fence where they don’t bother anything. They also attract wonderful large, black carpenter bees.
We don’t have a lesson for the concrete overlay. It lasted at least five years, but it would be interesting to see how it looks now. The stuff did not have a lifetime guarantee – but it did at least look better after five years than stamped/colored/dust on concrete.
Lighting has come a long way since then. We now have LED lights that come in all kinds of sizes and shapes, allowing us to find the optimum effect. Back then, there was no practical linear lighting, either (nor was linear lighting affordable!).
Digital cameras have come a LONG way since then! There is very little detail in these images. Today, you’d see every leaf and grain of sand – and the colors would be much more saturated.

Rocking it, 2002

We used to do home and garden shows, where we picked up new clients. This project was one of the best from that era: a rural site in Loomis with large natural rock outcroppings, oak woodland and slopes. The fireplace was featured in Outdoor Fire, a book of landscape ideas.

Loomis pool area — POOL AREA. WE DID NOT CHOOSE THE CHIMNEY COLOR!

The concept

The site is natural, woodsy, on rolling hills. It’s studded with natural rock outcroppings. The poison oak was cleared and views through the trees are open.

We proposed to work with the slope, terracing the pool area and creating a stream to run from the spa to the pool. The pool deck nestled against a large boulder, leading to a large outdoor fireplace.

When complete, the new landscape would flow in sweeping curves and terraces from the house to a new area upslope.

Flagstone, river cobble and integral color concrete tie the new landscape to the boulders.

The dining patio went in next to the house, backed by a new retaining wall and a natural boulder. The pool area was for hanging out day and night.

Phase two was supposed to add a large covered structure – kind of a kiva shaped thing, partially inset into the ground. It would have an outdoor kitchen to avoid trips to the house.

A rocky start for the pool

Most contractors are happy to work together with designers. For many pool contractors, it’s rare. I wish it were different.

We originally drew the pool away from the rock outcropping. The pool contractor had another idea: cut the rock and build the pool into the rock. Impressive! Unique! Stunning!

And likely prone to failure, we said. I’d sculpted rock before, and you just never know where a rock will crack, split or chip until you hit it with a chisel.

The pool contractor originally said they’d saw cut the rock, then remove material below the cut line. Not much risk of cracking the rock, they said.

Instead of that softer approach, they did something apparently involving a giant jackhammer that shook the entire house. Worse, it chipped off a large segment of the rock.

The furious client fired them. A lot of yelling and a new pool contractor later, the pool went back to where we originally drew it.

Another phase

After the pool area, the owners added a counter with a gas grill, designed by a mason. It didn’t match the rest of the design, even though the same mason did all the project stonework. I don’t know if the structure was ever built.

Lessons

Plans are just plans. No matter how much discussion, revisions or planning goes into them, a wily contractor can almost always talk someone into doing something else.
Never mess with large native rocks unless you don’t mind breaking them. Moving boulders around is ok, if you have heavy equipment that’s up to the task.
If you build in a forest, be prepared to get a leaf blower or hire someone to keep the decks cleared of leaves.
Just because you start with an approved concept does not mean anyone will continue with that concept in later phases (in this case, curves, stone facing, flagstone…).
Owners must watch the construction process, just to make sure things are going as planned. If they hadn’t been home during the rock adventure, they might not have stopped the work in time to save the rock.
Consensus is a fragile thing, when there are multiple contractors, a husband and wife, kids and a designer. Expect decisions to be dynamic and fluid – that can be good, too. It can help find better solutions to problems and improve project quality.

Retrospective: An early design

Endings. Beginnings. New Year. Time to run a retrospective series, telling stories of design across a not-so-epic scale. Hopefully you’ll be amused, entertained and enlightened.

It started with a party in 2000

We came into this project after meeting an architect at a party, who was working on a custom house, very clean, very chic. It was that kind of party, after all.

His clients were very much into art, and wanted something to showcase their sculptures, give them places to hang out, look good from the house and provide privacy along the back of the property.

I don’t remember much about the party, maybe it was to celebrate Belgian New Year, eat lots of frites and speak in two languages (French and English, no Flemish here).

We’re still friends with the architect, but the host has since divorced, moved far away and disappeared from our lives.

A dynamic design

This thing started with all kinds of fun things. At this point, we were a lot closer to our past life in France, where Annette worked with a city and Mike worked with an architect d’extérieur (his term). We’re still in touch with this architect, too. Although he’s perhaps more an author than an architect at this point.

There was a giant hand for lying in the sun, a patio fountain, groves of trees (we wanted drought tolerant palo verdes, ended up with short-lived birches). There was a huge walnut tree that the house was partially designed around. Visitors arrived at the front door after passing through a walled sculpture garden.

No lack of controversy here. The house’s style departed radically from the neighborhood’s. People would drive by and throw eggs, give either the bird or a thumbs up, and generally act crazy or nice.

The Sacramento Bee ran an article. Someone named it the Fire Station.

Little did they know that those trees we’d designed to march all the way across the front yard would make the façade virtually disappear within a few years!

Unlike an Ayn Rand character, none of us got famous. We didn’t land wonderful commissions from art lovers or people wanting something unique.

Dogs, vegetables, delete walnut

Somewhat suddenly the owners became super fans of schnausers. Two of them. So in went a dog run. There was a parrot in the story too, but he didn’t need any special landscaping.

That incredible, historic walnut tree was too messy. It went, replaced by a river birch. Now the house was open to the levee!

The olives grew in, creating deep shade in the front.

Growing your own vegetables was a thing, too. In went two raised beds that produced a few years of crops, only to become an eyesore.

The live oaks grew to completely screen the house in the back, also shading out the plants underneath and burying them in leaf litter. This was a good look, actually, since a large sculpture under the trees was unobstructed. Or would have been if the lower limbs had been pruned to reveal the art.

Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU)

At some point the original owners decided the house was, after all, too small. Or they had friends stay with them. We don’t know. It seemed to function quite well as it was, with a beautiful dining room nestled off a large, functional kitchen, a living room on another level, a master bedroom and bath on the second floor and an office and bath nestled near the stairway.

So it got an ADU. We only saw it after the house had been sold, so the who and why remain a mystery.

The ADU, done by the original architect, helped the landscape design. It better anchored the patio, provided more privacy and did not replace any important plants or sculptures.

Maintenance during this period seemed to fall off. Surfaces degraded, plants grew without trimming and moss encroached on the concrete paving in winter.

SOLD!

We didn’t learn of the ADU or other changes until the new owner called us for a consult. Funny, since we had been in touch with the original architect over the years, and it didn’t seem like something that should stay secret. Certainly not on an eighteen year old project.

Moss covered the decomposed granite paving, she did not want a dog run cutting through the garden, and she wanted to add vegetable planters, replacing the ones removed by the original owners. The stairs from the terrace, replaced by a fun, friendly but less than skilled contractor, needed replacement, too.

The original owners repainted the screen walls deep viridian green, maybe more Hooker’s green. They looked better in earth tones to match the house, but you know how it goes: never tell an artist what color to paint something. Viridian is a great color for painting water in Puget Sound. For walls in Mediterranean Sacramento, not so much. Since then, someone repainted the walls a more appropriate gray green that goes well with the olives.

The olives screening the house are now mature, and should be pruned to better show off their structure and let more light through to the ground – although not enough to reignite the original controversy. The decomposed granite has been restored, the chain link fence at the dog run removed so the back yard is a continuous space.

Lessons

Following a design over a period of decades is enlightening!

All landscapes, even low maintenance ones, need to be kept up. Preferably by skilled people. Low maintenance is not no maintenance.
Trees require skilled pruning to admit light and show off their shapes.
Paving needs to be brushed, swept or power washed to remove algae and moss buildup in winter.
As trees grow, sun loving plants that thrive for years when the trees are relatively small need to be replaced by more appropriate species or simply eliminated to let the leaf litter become the ground treatment. Leaf litter is more natural, conserves water and in this case worked well with the sculpture.
Think twice before you build something difficult and expensive to remove. In this case, a long concrete dog run and associated chain link fence. Especially if you don’t want to reduce resale value. The yard was fenced, there wasn’t really anything a dog would destroy, so why a dedicated dog run? I don’t know, but then I never had a pack of schnauzers either.
Don’t overplant! The original owners packed parts of the landscape with new plants, only to rip much of the plant material away as it grew too crowded. The new landscape should look too spaced out and a bit barren, even: plants coming up through bark. Within three years they should grow in nicely.
Leaf litter from walnuts acts as a growth inhibitor to creeping raspberry. The plants grew slowly to create an easily maintained ground cover. Then they removed the walnut. As a result, the creeping raspberry went a bit nuts, it seems, requiring more maintenance to head it back. We don’t really know the full story, except that there wasn’t any creeping raspberry when the house was sold. Lesson: landscapes are funny little ecosystems where everything tries to find a balance but sometimes doesn’t.

So long, Houz2. It was fun.

Houz used to be a great design resource. They even wanted us to upload images and tell stories. We even got badges for good work. Then the badges became more and more scarce, the sales calls more frequent. There was less and less reward for adding content to their site and more demand for “upgrades”. Client inquiries became rarer and rarer, and that was the crux of the matter.

Past Projects retrospective images — PAST PROJECTS – DECADES OF LANDSCAPE DESIGN

It wasn’t just a simple sales call either. We were assigned our own sales hawk. High pressure “we’ll set an appointment to show you our video” sales.

You might ask, if the video is so convincing, why don’t they just post it to pop up when we early adopters sign in? I did. Why is that salesperson hovering nearby in cyberspace? Gee. I dunno.

Just to be clear, they used images uploaded by designers and builders for free. These could have been considered a main reason people would visit their site: to get design ideas, for free, no sales pitch, no subscription. But no immediate link to cash flow either. Maybe more hits, higher rankings but in the end that’s not the same as every designer and builder paying monthly, is it?

The calls continued. Three on one day! I resisted. I finally politely told the sales person I wasn’t interested. When that didn’t work, I rudely told her. Yes! I’m the fool who will turn down your supreme offer, after refusing to watch the video. 2020 was a rough year, I didn’t need any more stress. Besides, if I’m going to watch a video, there are plenty of funny ones on the Web.

Houz2 pages will march into the cyber sunset in March

Today, the first foreshadowing of the imminent end drifted like a menacing bruise-black storm cloud into my inbox. It said, translated into real English from their best corporate spinspeak, that unless we pay to upgrade our account, it will just… go away. We have until March, when the pages we have on their site will be shutting down.

They call it a web site, but sorry. It’s just some hosted pages on someone else’s site. Is telling the truth that toxic to sales?

Like the pages decides to shut down all on their own. Web sites sites don’t just shut themselves down, like they were all hanging out in a bar in the Matrix and got all suicidal. No. Somebody shuts them down. Maybe something else eats them, like a cyberspace AI that relishes the taste of landscape project images. So, rather than potentially angering a prospective cash cybercow, they write in passive tense. They blame that bad, bad web site – actually hosted pages – for, sniff, going away to the Great Blue Void.

The pitch

They want you to watch a video, so you’ll somehow agree to pay them hundreds of dollars more per year in addition to our current web site. I didn’t watch. After considerable digging, I did find a pricing chart. No wonder they wanted to personally present their new features.

*What they offer*	*What we already have*
Templates (theirs)	Templates (WordPress)
Mobile Friendly	Mobile Friendly
Social media buttons, contact page	Social media buttons, contact page
Custom domain name	Custom domain name

IS THIS A DEAL, OR… NOT?

The Houzzless future

We’ll continue. Houzz will (probably) continue. We’ll go our separate ways, perhaps with some sad memories of how cool they used to be, triggering other sad memories of now-departed things that were too wonderful to last. Borders Books, for example.

What’s next? Time for a RETROSPECTIVE!

THIS is our web site, ending in .lucioledesign.com. It’s NOT going away.

We’ll take the content that sat on those pages for years and years to create a bit of a retrospective. The projects, how they evolved, maybe even where they are now, perhaps nineteen years later. In the next few days, weeks, whatever, we’ll post a longer history of past projects, anchoring them in deeper time than the typical build, photograph, showcase cycle that fades quickly.

Lest I sound boastful about our web site’s permanence, I’ll say that my opinion may not matter here. Our site could be eaten by cyberspace AIs when they take over the world, become super-intelligent or just don’t like us humans making all that noise like a hoard of buzzing leaf blowers. The Singularity (not to be confused with a black hole) might hit around 2030 (I checked on Google). Maybe a bit later. Maybe it already happened but we didn’t notice. Yes, a super intelligent AI could indeed fool us, but that’s not saying much. We humans are easily fooled, after all. My thinking on this is that unless the AIs either move beyond needing to live in computers powered by electricity, someone will have to generate their power and build their circuits. So it’s off to the gallium arsenide mines we’ll go!

Why did I spell their name funny? Because if I spell it right, their sales people might get all energized again and barrage us with offers! You’re right. They’re probably going to do that anyway, especially if they don’t get enough takers.

If you’re a fan of our pages on that site, don’t despair!

Most of the projects are at lucioledesign in the portfolio section, and here in the blog. The rule is unbuilt and recent projects that haven’t yet matured will be in the blog. Mature landscapes will be in our portfolio, along with videos.

Four options for a new back yard

This is an example of why we get professional surveys. We sketched a pool that encroached on some rock outcroppings on the slope, not readily visible from the house. The survey also gave us the exact slope, useful for calculating retaining wall heights, steps, terracing…

This was supposed to be four equal sized images, since no concept is more important than another until it’s chosen. The computer thought otherwise, alas.

Creating options…

Our original consult worked well enough, and just needed some adjustments to the pool. The slope, on the other hand, was less uniform that it looked as we peered off the top.

The slope was actually an opportunity to create more interesting terraces – or decks – or levels to either soften the transition from flat to slope or accentuate it.

All the options have basically the same features, although some functions take place in different areas of the landscape.

There’s a vegetable garden, pollinator garden and a vineyard. There’s lots of space for outdoor living and entertainment.

The ADU is something everyone seems to be building, and will need to be drawn up by an engineer or architect. It’s a whole different animal, with energy calculations and structural engineering.

A new workflow

The drawings were done to scale on iPads, using the surveyor’s CAD file as a base. This is great for quick concept development, but not so much for adding formatted text and creating multi-page documents.

We linked our iPads to the network, where we store the images. We can work anywhere, even in the garden! They’re then placed into desktop publishing files, where text can be styled, refined and formatted precisely. The files can also be reformatted for different page sizes, from 24″ x 36″ to letter for easy communication via e-mail as pdfs.

Finally! Irrigation AI

Although it’s been a while that CAD programs were supposed to automate the creation of irrigation plans, it looks like they’re finally doing so in a usable way. We can create graphics that auto-calculate (mostly), pipe sizing (mostly), pressure loss calcs (mostly). Why “mostly”? Because the plan is schematic, so pressure loss won’t be what’s really there, line pressure varies over time, the graphics often need to be “tickled” to get them to update… but overall, it’s much better than it was!

A brave new world

Before, each number had to be manually calculated and typed in. This required looking up pipe runs on a sizing chart, not a fun thing for humans to do. But for a computer… no problem. Although I suspect that the computer is calculating pressure loss dynamically, no chart involved. Computers are good at math, after all.

The other really cool thing here is that we can, with a moderate level of geekiness, create graphics that plug into plan data to display information, more than would have been done by hand. The best example is pressure at the valve, something reviewers never asked for, but now part of asking for things that look very engineered but probably aren’t so much in reality.

I even discovered a Crash! Boom! bug doing this project, the kind where everything just disappears. Fixed in an update, luckily. After project submittal, unfortunately.

What? There may not be 58.85 PSI at that valve when it’s installed? Well, no. It assumes that line pressure never fluctuates – a pretty good assumption in this case because we’re using a custom pump to pull water out of the pond.

But what if more than one station is open? They’re drip stations, after all, so this can be done. That increases the flow in the main line, therefore the friction (no problem as long as flow does not exceed 5 feet per second).

And what about in ten years, when there may be deposits in the lines? Or when the emitters have some wear on them and may not put out exactly 2.00 gallons per hour each.

Then there’s a bit of slope here, not enough to really affect things since the main line runs along a more or less level path – but water gains or loses 0.433 PSI per vertical foot. Enough to move that 58.85 to… something else. I dread the day the bureaucrats add this factor into the calculations!

The really funny thing here is that once the system has been tested and adjusted by experts, the people who follow them may not be. A manager fiddling around, a gardener, someone’s geeky kid. You just never know. At least the irrigation controller senses water flow, weather, environmental factors and programs itself to optimize watering. Unless someone changes the parameters for the plants. If the controller thinks it’s watering lawn, it will put down more water than for ground cover. Since it only knows what it’s told, this could get interesting…

But darn if that computer AI stuff still doesn’t look cool and give instant design feedback! It warns if a valve isn’t connected to the system (just because you drew a pipe doesn’t always mean it actually hooked up to the valve). It says if there’s not enough pressure, it knows irrigation catalogs, it’s parametric so you can say what the limits are and it will follow your instructions: nothing less than 3/4″ diameter? OK! No half inch pipe, done.