Lumo Gives Irrigators Superpowers

X-ray vision into volumes. A spidey-sense for leaks. The ability to teleport from ranch to ranch.

Lumo gives irrigators superpowers.

Or, more practically, it’s a tool they can use to irrigate with efficiency and precision. It saves them time turning valves and walking the lines looking for leaks, and it gives them a more complete picture of their irrigation system’s health and performance.

With Lumo’s block-level data and accountable automation, irrigators can better protect their crops and critical infrastructure from damage, and achieve higher levels of irrigation precision across more acres.

Lumo does not replace irrigators. It makes them better. It gives them the ability to do more with less and deliver better results.

Five ways Lumo helps irrigators drive irrigation system performance and precision

1. Catch leaks as soon as they happen, not hours or days later.

Leaks are often only visible after the water’s been running for a few hours. And even then, an irrigator might be in a rush or not have time to inspect a whole ranch. It’s easy for a leak to go missed, wasting water, running your pump unnecessarily, causing damage to your crop and eroding your soil.

With block-level flow data and real-time alerts, irrigators can catch and fix leaks way faster and avoid all that wasted time, money and water.

2. Flush clogged filters before they lead to under-irrigation.

A clogged filter might reduce flow by 10 or 20, even 50%, which is in that sneaky range where it makes a difference but is hard to detect by eye.

Water’s still dripping. Just not at the right rate.

With block-level flow data, you see the drop immediately and get a heads up that the flow’s lower than normal. An irrigator can go out, flush the filter, and be back in business in no time.

Even better, because you know exactly how much less water a block received, you can then schedule another irrigation to make up the difference and get back to plan. No harm. No foul.

3. Figure out which blocks to run together based on performance.

Without objective performance data, irrigators are often left to guess about the ideal way to run their system. Or are stuck doing costly and time-consuming tests to figure out what works best.

With Lumo, it’s easy to see when you’re scheduling too many blocks at once, or when certain block combinations lead to pressure issues or uneven performance.

We’ve had multiple irrigators learn that their system can’t handle as many blocks at once as they thought, and have made the shift to scheduling smaller sets that achieve better distribution uniformity.

Real-time data gives irrigators the feedback they need to calibrate performance and dial in precision.

4. Respond faster to heat events by running the system overnight and on weekends.

One of the most stressful situations for an irrigator to be in is seeing a heat wave coming in the forecast and knowing full well that with the time they have each day there’s going to be no way for them to get enough water down on all the blocks they oversee.

With Lumo, that time constraint gets removed. Irrigators can schedule irrigations to run overnight or on weekends and still sleep soundly, knowing they’ll receive an alert if something does go awry.

By unlocking all 24 hours of the day, and all seven days of the week, you’re in a much better position to respond to heat events and make sure your crops receive enough water to prevent yield loss and preserve quality markers.

5. Spend less time manually operating and more time managing performance.

When an irrigator has to worry about turning water on and off, remembering which valves are open and which are closed, where they need to be and exactly when they need to be there to get the timing roughly right on all their irrigations – there’s little time left for actually improving system performance and ensuring irrigation plans get executed with precision.

With Lumo, they can automate their irrigation sets with accountability, remove a ton of that manual work and unnecessary driving around, and pay a lot more attention to making sure blocks receive the right amount of water at the right time.

With automatic alerts, they don’t need to spend so much time inspecting lines or checking filters, and can devote more time to making system improvements or completing other high priority tasks.

The shift from getting the job done to delivering better outcomes

Lumo transforms the role of the irrigator from someone who is primarily responsible for manual tasks (turning valves, checking lines, etc.) to someone who is responsible for delivering outcomes (irrigating to plan, quickly responding to heat events, achieving block-level precision, etc).

It’s a shift:

• From being reactive to being proactive
• From flying to blind to always having a bird’s eye view
• From always playing catch up to being on top of things
• From doing maintenance on a set schedule to doing targeted maintenance based on performance data
• From losing sleep over unknown and unquantified performance issues to having peace of mind that your system is performing as expected and irrigation plans are being executed precisely

With Lumo, irrigators are able to deliver more value back to the business in three key areas:

1. Better Crops

• Ensuring each block receives the planned volume
• Never skipping irrigations or cutting them short due to time constraints
• Responding faster and more flexibly to heat events
• More easily applying water ahead of and after fertigations to improve nutrient uptake

2. Lower Pumping Costs

• Scheduling irrigations around off-peak times to reduce energy costs
• Irrigating at night to reduce evaporative loss
• Planning sets to optimize performance
• Better utilizing existing pump capacity

3. Reduced Risk

• Receiving alerts about leaks automatically to prevent crop and infrastructure damage
• Catching irrigation infrastructure issues early
• Engaging in data-driven preventative maintenance
• Avoid blowing up your six-figure pump

Improving Irrigator Efficiency and Quality of Life

With Lumo, irrigators are able to cover more acres with greater precision in less time. Rather than spending their days driving to ranches, turning valves, and walking the lines, they’re able to focus on achieving and maintaining optimal irrigation performance and ensuring all blocks get the right amount of water at the right time.

Lumo makes the job of an irrigator less stressful and more valuable to the business.

It’s a powerful tool that gives them the ability to achieve block-level precision, better crop outcomes and greater peace of mind.