Last week "Phil The Groundhog" didn't see his shadow predicting the rare early spring 🌱. Will your lawn & garden be ready early 🌻? I for one am certainly excited for spring & can't wait to get back out into the yard!
🏡 Regardless if you have a "Green Thumb" or you hire a professional landscaper to manage your yard, we are quickly approaching the time to start thinking about what your yard look like this year 🤔? Soon the garden centers will be packed & of course you will have to decided on the types of 🌺 flowers 🌼 and fertilizers that are best for your yard, but ask yourself are my maintenance systems energy efficient ? Do they highlight my newly planted landscaping? Is my home properly protected with multi-functional security cameras?
Last year we discovered some cool new tech that not only helped our clients save money monthly & yearly on their water bill, but also added beautiful accents to their landscape & offered security while they were home or away.
With so many options on the market it can be tricky to navigate through all the noise & determine which items are worth investing in.
For our firm the tech solution of 2018 was the RACHIO smart irrigation controller. We were excited to deploy their solution into several of our valued clients' home's, & received rave reviews from the features the system offered & how easy it was to control after the project was completed. At the end of 2018 Rachio released their 3rd generation of their smart irrigation controller. With the release of the 3rd generation controller they also released a Wireless Flow Meter to help prevent costly water leaks. Rachio's solution gives our clients the ability to easily manage their landscaping water schedule via the Rachio Mobile App.
A lot of our valued clients do utilize a professional landscaping company to manage their yard. This system has a feature to create a limited profile so professional landscapers can assist in the management of the yards watering schedule. The Rachio solution is feature packed & for the cost it's definitely worth the investment & in most cases pays for itself within the first year.
Another solution we saw released late last year was the Philips Hue Smart Outdoor Lighting solution. You may already know Philips Hue as the company with the indoor color changing bulbs (which are awesome) for your home, but now they have a new line of products for your yard. If you're like me & a fan of the Philips Hue platform this new outdoor product line is a must-have to perfectly accent your beautiful new landscaping.
If you're like me, I always seem to be more productive performing yard work with some tunes playing. Whether it's with headphones or my portable Bluetooth speaker, I gotta have something playing to keep the drive alive. Earlier this week SONOS announced a new line of in-ceiling, in-wall & more importantly OUTDOOR speakers. These SONOS Architectural Outdoor Speakers powered by their *NEW* SONOS AMP are certainly on my list for my backyard upgrades.
Last year I also converted from the traditional gas power lawnmower and started utilizing the E-Go battery powered platform. From the lawnmower to the weed-eater & leaf blower, this platform has proven to work reliably, takes up a small footprint in the garage & I no longer have to worry about filling my devices with smelly gasoline anymore. What I find really cool is that the batteries can interchange between tools, so if for any reason I forget to charge my leaf blower battery I can use the lawnmower one & keep on going. I have been very happy with this investment & this platform might be a good fit for you too.
Another smart-home-solution I have had installed for a few years now is the RING Floodlight Cam solution. This system gives my family the comfort of perimeter lighting around our house with a built in 1080P HD Camera that has 2-way communication & a 110db siren to ward off potential intruders. Also having push notifications to our mobile devices when motion is detected puts our mind at ease knowing that our home is protected while we are at work or asleep in bed. Last year I can remember when we had an old tree removed from our front yard & I was able to watch Apple Tree Services throughout the entire process like I was there from the RING mobile application. It was pretty cool, & they did a great job!
These are just a few ideas of what you can do to improve the efficiency, design & security for your home this spring. If you have any other ideas please feel free to share them down in the comments. We'd love to hear about the solutions you use when designing & maintaining your yard once spring rolls around.
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