NEWS

Even Drought Tolerant Landscapes Still Need StrongBox® Enclosures

Date Posted: October 11, 2018

Across the Southwest, water conservationists and city regulators are pushing for lower water usage in landscape design due to ongoing drought conditions and the limited availability of fresh water. Commercial properties in particular are in transition because they want to follow government guidelines, but still create inviting and beautiful landscapes that provide shade and buffer from city streets.

To find a happy medium, landscape architects are scaling back grass areas and trying to come up with inventive ways to use native species that look appealing without looking too sparse. From an irrigation perspective, sprinklers and rotors are now the minority while drip irrigation is predominant. Plants and shrubs are being placed more sporadically and then irrigated by a drip line. No matter what is planted, there is still a need for irrigation systems and most are still run with piping in the ground from a point of connection. Today, valve spacing and quantity is the difference. While commercial grounds used to have 8-16 valves to distribute the water effectively to all the grasses and plants, it has now been replaced with 4-6 valves mostly running drip systems and delivering the water to individual plants.

Being able to avoid the cost of replacing an entire commercial landscape due to unprotected controls is worth the upfront investment in a StrongBox enclosure.

Although smaller, irrigation systems still need the conventional type of controllers to maintain the watering schedules and provide irrigation managers with the information they need on water usage. Controllers are becoming more sophisticated by using ET data from NOAA or soil moisture sensors to adjust valve times to coincide with how much water to dispense during each run cycle. Where there is a need for a controller, there is also a need for StrongBox enclosures.

Protection against thievery and vandalism are the biggest reasons for installing enclosures. If the controllers are vandalized or even turned off, the plants, which are sustained by these drip systems will perish if they go a couple weeks without water.

Scott Rowan, Director of Community Asset Management for DMB Communities in Scottsdale, AZ appreciates what Strongbox Enclosures provide to his company in community development projects like Eastmark in Mesa, AZ, named the 8th best- selling master community in the U.S.A.

“We have extreme weather out here in the desert and since we’ve been using Strongbox Enclosures, we have had absolutely no problems,” says Rowan. “They are secure, solid, and stay clean looking, even in this tough climate where we have had more than 30 days of 100-degree weather this year. Protecting our irrigation systems is something I don’t even think about anymore because we can count on StrongBox Enclosures–and that’s a good thing!”

Strongbox Enclosures Help to Combat Thieves

In the last six years, we have noticed an increase in controller vandalism across the country – mostly thieves eager to steal valuable brass piping from backflow devices. To combat that, cities like Phoenix, AZ, are replacing cages with powder coated solid enclosures to cover devices. This new approach takes the temptation away from thieves who usually see the 30 lbs. of brass as easy money. If they don’t know what’s beneath the enclosure, then they won’t be as tempted. To learn more information about Aluminum Enclosures, see our product catalog.

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