Irrigation System
Residential Irrigation
Reuse water lines to serve residential irrigation are in place, with water service provided by the Toho Water Authority. Irrigation is generally limited to two days per week. Contact Toho Water Authority at 407-518-2160 or visit their website for watering schedules and answers to any water quality, delivery, or billing issues.
Community Irrigation
Conserving water is an increasing concern, and Harmony is no exception.
The District manages its irrigation water by linking the thousands of irrigation heads in its parks to a central computer that acts to control their activity.
This computer receives data daily from an on-site weather station that tracks wind activity, temperature, solar radiation, humidity and rainfall.
This data allows the computer to keep track of how much water is lost to evaporation and plant transpiration and how much water is gained from rain between irrigation cycles.
It then instructs each irrigation zone to run just enough (or not at all) to make up the water lost.
It also allows for irrigation throughout Harmony's parks to be turned off and on from on location instead of manually turning valves open and closed.
When it rains any meaningful amount, the system immediately shuts down any irrigation that may be running in the common areas to take advantage of nature's "free" water.
According to estimates by the South Florida Water Management District, the Harmony system saves roughly 22.7 million gallons of water per year over a conventional irrigation program, and a corresponding amount of water bill dollars. The water saved is equal to the volume of about 65 water towers the size of the one that you see along Route 192 in St. Cloud or the volume of 1,500 family-sized swimming pools.
Irrigation System Map
In FY 2012, the District engaged Insight Irrigation to perform a complete mapping of the community irrigation system, including all the zones and valves. This system is in Google map format for reference by field service personnel. Aaron Smith from Insight Irrigation is continuing to update the system as each new community is constructed.
Advantages To This Mapping System:
- The District knows the exact location of each and every zone and valve, despite some initially being difficult to find, due to being grassed over in some instances.
- It saves the District's irrigation technicians and field service personnel a great deal of time in locating zones and valves that need maintenance or repair.
- If a resident notices a broken irrigation head or other irrigation system problem, the exact location can be easily identified and relayed to field service personnel.
