This "dumb" feature of conventional irrigation controllers combined with the prohibitive labor costs required to constantly adjust the irrigation controllers for common areas to track the weather and the lack of interest in homeowners in their sprinkler systems often results in great excesses of irrigation water applied to slopes and to the property above slopes. If rain is combined with excess irrigation, slope failures and cracked foundation and patios can result.

WeatherSet's self-adjusting, smart, ET weather based irrigation controllers automatically adjust irrigation to track changes in weather. If a reasonable base irrigation schedule is entered into WeatherSet controllers, then plants remain healthy and slopes remain drier. In our "Built for the Builder"™ program, landscape architects can specify reasonable irrigation programs which WeatherSet will put as the default program in our controllers shipped to the job site.

Below is a chart for the year 2000 of a WeatherSet controller and how it irrigated in Phoenix. Note that from summer to winter, watering was automatically reduced by 2/3 by the WeatherSet controller. This self-adjusting, weather-based feature of WeatherSet controllers is an example of Smart Water Application Technology (SWAT). This self-adjusting feature is how the smart controllers from WeatherSet work to keep for drier slope and more stable slopes. From that graph below, you can see that "climate based irrigation controllers" may be another name for WeatherSet controllers.