Issaquah School District
Washington

A little technology, a lot of nature: getting the irrigation balance right for the schools of Issaquah School District

Harmony. Balance. Equilibrium. When left alone, nature allows flora adapted to local conditions to flourish. But as we humans have altered the landscape to our own ends, plants and gardens have benefited from a little extra help from us. That’s as true in environments with fairly regular rainfall as it is in arid areas. It’s why the intelligent use of irrigation is crucial to healthy lawns and gardens in busy institutions like schools, to ensure we’re not wasting water while keeping plants green and flourishing.

Harmony and balance are also ideals we strive for in our own lives. Work and play. Business and pleasure. Adrenaline and calm. It’s why schooling attempts to balance exercise of the body with exercise of the mind, and why we need sports fields as well as classrooms.

Sometimes that harmony and balance comes together in an individual’s life, making them the ideal person for a specific role at that time: a combination of skills, circumstance, and passions that’s just, well, right.

For Nels Tronsen, at Issaquah School District in Washington State, that’s certainly the case. He and a colleague are responsible for ensuring the district’s 27 school landscapes are kept watered and healthy, and it turns out his experience, and his interests – not to mention his family connections – make him the perfect person for the job.

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More than 18,500 students attend schools in Issaquah School District. Those schools are positioned across 110 square miles of Washington State’s East King County. All of those sites are watered using smart controllers from irrigation expert Calsense, and Tronsen and his colleague work to make that irrigation system run smoothly.

In an area where average monthly precipitation levels drop from a high of 11 inches in November down to just over an inch in July and August – and back up again from a touch over four inches in September to almost nine inches in October – it’s critical that irrigation is calibrated correctly to deal with those fluctuations.

“We irrigate primarily between May and September, with the main focus being June to September,” Tronsen says. “It starts really quickly and then goes away just as fast! We go from not requiring irrigation at all to irrigating 26 or 27 sites. There’s perhaps a month where I can get them all up and running properly, because the period of time between potential frost damage and when I can actually run this system is pretty short. The earliest I can turn it on is April, and then I’m definitely irrigating sports fields come May.

“So all those sites have to be checked that they’re working properly, and any leaks need to be fixed. The frost damage is minimal, generally speaking – most damage tends to come from mowers, anywhere a bed comes in contact with lawn. There are two sprinkler heads there, those in the lawn and in the garden bed, and they can be knocked pretty easily. When we turn the system on, those knocks cause high flow alerts in the smart irrigation system. Those alerts allow us to go direct to the point of any water flow issues and deal with the problem, which ends up saving water. We’re constantly fixing things, because it never seems to wake up the same way you put it to bed, unfortunately!”

One of the challenges of managing the irrigation for a multitude of educational sites is dealing with sports facilities. Those sports fields – for baseball and softball at three high schools, and for softball at four middle schools – are all sand-based.

“Because they’re sand-based, they need to be irrigated a little earlier,” Tronsen explains. “We’ve got to ensure that these are prioritized, because they can dry out quickly compared to other landscapes with other soil types.”

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During the irrigation off-season, Tronsen makes tweaks to the system program.

“I can get in there and try to make things more efficient as far as auditing specific sites, talking to the technicians that are there, and figuring out what the needs are,” he says. “If there are areas that are pretty well established, that don’t need as much water, we can start dialing those back and tweaking settings to make sure that we’re optimizing water use. Part of the reason for this is that there is irrigation in established areas that have been there for two decades. They simply don’t need as much water as newer areas, so we can throttle that right back.”

“The other major task during the off-season is to upgrade our older controllers to the most recent models. That helps to optimize the system, reducing our usage to preserve water.”

Once the irrigation season is in full swing, in late spring and early summer, the system provides daily alerts to each on-site technician to let them know of any issues.

“They get those alerts on their cellphones, and they can let me know immediately if they’ve noticed an unexpected flow rate change or something similar,” Tronsen explains. “From there we assess if it’s something they can take care of, like heads getting clogged with debris, or if it’s a more significant issue that they’ll need my help with.”

Communication is vital when you’re dealing with so many distinct sites. It’s also a balancing act between Tronsen and his partner, to ensure they’re aware of the adjustments the other person has made to the system.

“It can be hard to make sure that he knows everything that I changed, and not go in and potentially reverse something. Communication is really, really key.”

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Prior to joining Issaquah SD, Tronsen worked for the neighboring Bellevue School District, and before that he and his wife ran their own landscape business. She now works for Issaquah School District too. It makes for a unique kind of balance, a work-life harmony that utilizes skills and passions developed over time.

“I was interested in a lot of different things in high school,” Tronsen says. “I had the opportunity to attend a free college, so I studied multimedia design and production as well as electronics – all kinds of different stuff as it suited my interests. My wife was going to the same college, and she was in horticulture. I got the gardening bug from her, I suppose!”

Fueled by that passion, Tronsen’s experience in electronic technology and multimedia design helped steer him towards the world of irrigation.

“It’s really proven to be beneficial. All of the electronics technician stuff I did in college plays into what I do now: the upgrading of the controllers, troubleshooting issues with decoders and solenoids and everything. And the multimedia design has helped with my computer expertise.

“It all comes together here in this role, and I get paid electrician wages for the updating of controllers in winter, and when I’m doing heavy-duty plumbing stuff like replacing backflows, I get plumber’s wages. My background seems like it’s all led up to being this irrigation guru of sorts.”

Meanwhile, that other important college connection paid off too.

“My wife is now a landscape technician with the School District,” Tronsen laughs. “She works with me. We both work our butts off because we come from the private sector, running our own business, and we have a huge attention to detail and our own instilled work ethics. We worked together on our landscape business for wealthy private clients, around raising our kids. But eventually we branched out. I started working for the state, and my wife joined me a few years later.”

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In a role that balances nature and technology, work and home life, what gives Tronsen the greatest satisfaction?”

“Oh, boy, I really enjoy a good-looking sports field,” Tronsen says. “Having the system optimized to meet the demands of the sports fields is pretty satisfying. I’m a bit of a perfectionist. It sounds kind of nerdy, but just having things work right is satisfying. Like I just want everything to have a flow sensor, everything to have master valves, everything to be dialed in, and just to work right.

“I get a huge amount of satisfaction when I solve something or fix a problem. If I run into an issue, and can use my skill set to fix it, it’s very rewarding. Because there’s never an end to the issues that you’re going to deal with when it comes to irrigation. So having a good tool set and skill set really helps. And that’s where the Calsense system is really useful to me, that balance of nature and technology, getting it to work together to allow that lush green sports field to flourish. Allowing it to do the job it’s there for, which is letting these kids play sport, exercise, and have fun.”

The way that balance is achieved has changed over the years, Tronsen says. Schools are built differently now, and so are their gardens.

The standard used to be a couple of shrubs here and there, a lot of grass and trees,” he says. “Whereas now we’re seeing perennials, even some annuals, and a lot of ground covers. And it’s a full-on garden, as opposed to just showing up and mowing some grass and trimming a few bushes.

“What that means is that we have sites with different needs. We’ve got some sites that are 30 years old, that just went through a remodel, and others that are newer and have higher water use. Using Calsense I can pull that up on my laptop and tweak everything as needed for those specific water requirements.”

Those changes have also had an impact on the scale of irrigation required.

“It’s completely changed the way that we have to approach things. Even though they’ve only added a few new sites since I’ve been here, there’s been remodeling to older sites. For example, at Pine Lake Middle School we went from only irrigating the soccer field, which was probably eight zones of irrigation, to much more irrigation school wide. And now there’s 56 zones.

“Overall, the amount of irrigation that I’m responsible for has just probably doubled since I’ve started here, and we haven’t added any help, and that’s only really possible because of our use of smart irrigation technology. It also means I’m not so irritated with the irrigation all the time too, which is better for me, and probably more pleasant for my wife!”

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