Plain answer

How to Control Irrigation Remotely

The problem is rarely the watering. It is that nobody knows a zone stopped watering until the grass tells them, three weeks later.

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The real problem

Remote control is mostly about finding out

People ask for remote irrigation control expecting the benefit to be turning valves on from a phone. In practice the valuable half is the other direction: knowing that a pump has tripped, a line has burst, a zone did not run last night, or that consumption on one district has doubled for no obvious reason.

A landscape maintenance team can only be in one place at a time. Across a set of parks spread over a city, the cost of not knowing is measured in dead planting and in water that ran into the ground for a fortnight before anyone noticed.

So the useful specification starts with what you want to be told, not what you want to switch. Almafor has built this for parks and district irrigation across Abu Dhabi and Al Ain for the Department of Municipalities and Transport, Abu Dhabi Municipality, ADNEC and the Abu Dhabi Sports Council.

The parts

What a remotely controlled irrigation network is made of

The pumping station

Pumps, drives, the control panel and the instrumentation that holds pressure in the network. Everything downstream depends on this working, so it gets the most protection and the most monitoring.

Zone valves and controllers

Solenoid valves grouped into zones, driven by a controller that holds the schedule. The controller must keep watering to schedule when it cannot reach the control room, or the network stops every time the signal drops.

Field measurement

Flow and pressure at least. Flow is what tells you a line has burst or a zone did not open, and it is the single most useful thing to add to a network that currently has none.

The link back

Fibre where a duct route exists, cellular where coverage is dependable, radio where neither works. Roadside routes usually mean civil work, and that civil work is often the largest line in the price.

Specification

What to insist on

Each station keeps running its schedule with the link down, and buffers its data until the link returns
Flow measurement per zone or per district, so an unopened valve or a burst line is visible
Alarms that distinguish a real fault from a nuisance, or the team will start ignoring them
Pressure control at the station rather than throttling, which is where the pumping energy goes
Field equipment rated for a chamber that will flood, fill with sand and be landscaped over
Access for calibration once the site is finished and planted
Consumption records per district, because that is what a water budget conversation needs
One screen showing the whole network, not one screen per station

Track record

Irrigation networks we have automated

Sixty seven parks and playgrounds, city district irrigation, an exhibition centre and irrigation mains.

Design and Construction of 67 Parks and Playgrounds in Various Areas in the City of Abu Dhabi CP11

Department of Municipalities & Transport, Abu Dhabi (DMT)

Date2025-08-03

CategoryAutomation, MEP, Panel Building

Irrigation automation for DMT, Shakhbout

Department of Municipalities & Transport, Abu Dhabi (DMT)

Date2025-08-01

CategoryAutomation, Panel Building

Irrigation automation for Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company

Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company ADNEC

Date2014-07-20

CategoryAutomation, MEP

Irrigation Mains at Khalifa City “A”

Abu Dhabi Municipality

Date2012-11-25

CategoryAutomation, MEP, Civil Engineering

See all 19 delivered projects →

Common questions

Questions we are asked about this

Can I control irrigation from my phone?

Yes, once the network has controllers and a communication path. Worth saying though that on managed municipal networks the phone is rarely the point. The value is in the system telling somebody that a zone did not run, rather than in somebody being able to start it from a car.

What happens if the internet or signal goes down?

On a properly designed network, nothing visible. Each station keeps its schedule locally, keeps its protections active and stores its data until the link returns. If a scheme requires the link to be up in order to irrigate, that is a design decision somebody made, and it is worth discovering at tender rather than in July.

How do I know if a zone is not watering?

Flow measurement. Without it, an unopened valve looks identical to a working one from the control room, and you find out when the planting dies. Adding flow measurement is the highest value single upgrade on most existing irrigation networks.

Can this be added to an existing irrigation system?

Usually yes. Existing valves and pipework generally stay. What gets added is controllers, instrumentation and the communication path, and sometimes a drive at the pumping station. The survey comes first, because what is installed and what is on the drawings rarely match on a network that has been extended over years.

How is this different from a home irrigation timer?

A timer waters on a schedule and has no idea whether anything happened. The systems here measure what actually flowed, protect the pumps, hold pressure across a district, raise alarms and keep a consumption record. The difference matters when the network is worth more than the controller and nobody is standing next to it.