"I'm glad that you enjoye your visit to Gamble and were able to get some good photos. It would be a good reference site. You heard correctly through the grapevine that I was impressed with your system. Being somewhat skeptical of most irrigation technology, yours is the best I've had the opportunity to work with. The other system at Gamble is the [Competitor Model] from [Company]. Both systems did a very good job for on demand water use, but Acclima has superior product. The hardware is much more substantial and was far better built. Don't change anything in the overall quality of it.
The learning curve to operate the system was very user friendly and easy to pick up. The ability to change the programming from zone to zone to increase/decrease was extremely easy compared to [Competitor Model]. I also liked the fact that the system was actually reading the actual soil conditions vs. going off a computer model for the (somewhat) local weather. Once I was able to get the entire system dialed in for optimum performance, it did a superb job.As I said earlier, I'm skeptical of irrigation technology as I've seen too many instances where things haven't worked as promised and too much time was spent trying to fix/track down problems (for example, [Another ET Brand and Model]. Our irrigation tech at the Oregon Garden has a full time job just trouble shooting that system.
I would always be monitoring the soil moisture to see how the controllers were working. When things started to look like I should irrigate, the next morning it had been done. With the zones that were on the [Competitor Model] controller, it wouldn't quite be as precise. I finally got to the point that I stopped worrying that the Acclima controller could do what it was designed for.
Acclima helped keep Gamble looking as good as we could keep it. Take good care and thanks again for letting me use a superb system!"