#196 - SLIDE App, Building in Public

[00:00:00] Before we jump into today's episode, I realized something recently. There are a lot of new people listening. First of all, thank you, but I've never really reintroduced myself properly. And this can be a little awkward for me, I sometimes don't like to talk about myself, but I do think the context matters. So for those of you who don't know me, my name is Andy Humphrey, often referred to as the Sprinkler Nerd.

[00:00:25] My path into this industry started back in 2002, right out of college from Montana State University as a landscape architect for Chapel Valley Landscape Company in Woodbine, Maryland. Chapel Valley hired me not because I was some great landscape architect, but because I knew AutoCAD. And I helped Chapel Valley build their first AutoCAD system. And at the time, I didn't have any master plan.

[00:00:52] I was just had my first job and I was curious, but I learned about irrigation and I did have a vision. And that path wound me through working for an irrigation distributor in Maryland. This was during the Toro slash Icon days. And Icon was a technology company that Toro purchased out of Colorado that became the Sentinel, central control product line.

[00:01:19] And I worked for the distributor doing all their specification for Toro Sentinel sales, support, all that kind of stuff, working with contractors, municipalities, landscape architects, irrigation consultants. And at that time, I discovered, let's see, this was 2004. First discovered the baseline product line, had a ton of success bringing baseline over to the East Coast. And I had an opportunity to move to Michigan, worked for Netafim, covering 13 states as a regional sales manager,

[00:01:49] 140 distribution locations before baseline came knocking and said, hey, we need someone to help us develop sales and sales channels on the East Coast. So at that time, I helped baseline build their first distribution channels, their first specification channels, working with contractors, training mostly on two wire, which I do think is interesting. But yet here we are 20 more than 20 years later, and we were still teaching the industry about two wire. Kind of crazy.

[00:02:18] But hey, that's what it was. So back in 2004, it was really curiosity that led me as well into the online business. And I started building some e-commerce companies to help support my young family. I eventually had the opportunity to pitch one of them, which was Eco Mowers on Shark Tank. And then I took my e-commerce knowledge, partnered it with a large distributor on the East Coast, Atlantic Irrigation, to build sprinklersupplystore.com.

[00:02:47] And then sensors happened and then LoRaWAN happened. And honestly, I'm still not entirely sure where all this is going. But maybe that's the point. Because in many ways, this podcast has become a record of that journey. Not me pretending to have all the answers, but learning in public and inviting you all along as we try to figure out where irrigation and technology in this industry is headed next.

[00:03:14] So whether you've been here since episode one or this is your first episode, thanks for being here. Let's get into it. If you are an irrigation professional, old or new, who designs, installs, or maintains high-end residential, commercial, or municipal properties, and you want to use technology to improve your business, to get a leg up on your competition,

[00:03:41] even if you're an old-school irrigator from the days of hydraulic systems, this show is for you. Hello, my friends. Today's episode is a little different. I want to invite you into a little experiment. Starting today, you can visit slide.sprinklernerd.com. Slide.sprinklernerd.com. Go try it. Seriously. Put in your property information. Try it on your own site. Try a customer site.

[00:04:11] Try a neighborhood park. Seriously, try your own house or the building down the street. And more importantly and seriously, be curious about the results. That's why I'm putting this ask out there. I want you to be curious about the results. Don't just ask, is this right? Ask, interesting. Why did it estimate that? Does that seem high? Does that seem low? What variables might be affecting this?

[00:04:39] Because this is very much version one. This is version one. And if you find a bug or if you have an idea, if you think something is confusing or you just want to tell me that I'm headed completely in the wrong direction, look in the top right corner of the site and click the little buoy icon. It's supposed to be a buoy. I know. It doesn't quite look like a buoy. It's supposed to be a buoy. That is the support ticket link. So send me a support ticket. It could be a bug. It could be a feature request.

[00:05:09] It could be feedback. Those tickets come directly to me, not to some team that's never going to get back to you. This is not an outsourced help desk. This is not an outsourced project. I coded all of this. Yes, I used some tools. Absolutely. This is also an experiment into vibe coding. So I'll just lay that down for you. But I'm doing this because I want to try building this in public. And I would genuinely love your help, feedback, support.

[00:05:39] So now, today's episode is a little different. I'm usually sitting down with guests, kind of walking around potential job sites or in offices and having conversations with all different types of people. But today, I want to pull back the curtain and invite you into this project that I just mentioned that I've been quietly building. And it's not because I have all the answers. It's actually kind of the opposite. Because over the years that I've been in this industry, one question keeps following me around.

[00:06:08] And it seems to be more relevant than ever at this point. And it's a question that isn't just related to the irrigation industry specifically, but it's a question that really landscape architects should be asking. Property managers should be asking. Homeowners should be asking. And likely, they either are asking it or they're thinking about it. And that question is this. How much water should my landscape actually use? Pretty simple question, right?

[00:06:36] How much water should a landscape actually use? But I feel like that it's surprisingly freaking complicated to answer. If you ask 10 contractors, 10 designers, 10 consultants, 10 water managers, they're all probably going to have a slightly different answer. And I think that's really interesting. We could all look at one landscape architectural blueprint. We could all visit one site.

[00:07:02] And with that one question, we're all going to give different answers. How much water will this landscape use? Is this property using too much water? What should my water budget be? Those are all great questions. But to answer them, it's like suddenly we all need to start crunching numbers on a spreadsheet, hunting down weather station data, asking for flow calculations.

[00:07:31] Some of you guys might want to put catch cans out and start measuring the distribution uniformity of every zone. So we all come at this from a different approach. And I'm actually not here to really say that any of them are wrong. There's just lots of different ways to do things. I just think there's a simpler way. Because I do think the science exists. I think the research exists. I think the standards exist. I'm not really sure why we don't teach this. When I say we, I'm not sure why we all aren't taught to do something exactly the same way.

[00:08:01] So I kind of just kept thinking there has to be a better way. Not easier because we skip the science. Easier because good science should be easier to access. So as I mentioned in the beginning, today I'm introducing something that I would like to build, that I am building in public. Something that's called SLIDE. And I did not invent SLIDE. SLIDE is the Simplified Landscape Irrigation Demand Estimation. Simplified Landscape Irrigation Demand Estimation.

[00:08:30] And one thing I want to be really clear about is I didn't invent SLIDE. The SLIDE method was developed by researchers at the University of California Cooperative Extension and later became the foundation for landscape water demand standards and research. So what I'm trying to do is make these ideas or those ideas easier to access. If SLIDE exists, why aren't we all using it? And these would be great comments if you're listening and you know why. Send me a note.

[00:08:59] Visit slide.sprinklinner.com. Use the buoy on the top right corner. Submit a feature request. Drop a note so I can hear from you. I would love it. And in some ways, this kind of dawned on me that people can be perfectly comfortable not knowing things. Or they can be perfectly comfortable not knowing something but sounding like they know something.

[00:09:24] Making something up that sounds reasonable, but there might not be anything to back that up. And I've probably been there on both sides. I've been perfectly comfortable not knowing something, but I've also been so uncomfortable not knowing that maybe I have said something that wasn't super accurate because I was afraid to not know the answer.

[00:09:43] And I think that there's something interesting about this that has to do with not knowing in public versus not knowing behind closed doors. I think we can all be really curious when we're alone, when we're driving, we're wondering, we're thinking, we don't know many answers, we're pondering. But then in public, there's this pressure. I'm not sure where it comes from. Maybe school systems. That you should know the answer.

[00:10:13] And again, I think that's why I would like to encourage you to be curious. To be more of a learn-it-all, not a know-it-all. And that's why I'm building this in public and would love your feedback. But it reminds me of a great analogy, and I don't remember who told it to me or who the original author is of this analogy. But that is, people generally are not afraid of missing the shot. As a basketball analogy. They're not afraid of missing the shot. They're afraid of being seen missing the shot.

[00:10:43] And think about that. If you have a basketball hoop in your backyard, you'll take all kinds of crazy shots. You might close your eyes and take a shot. You might try some hook shot. You might turn around and throw it over your head and see what happens. But you're alone. And it's okay to fail. But if you have an audience watching you, that changes the game. Now all of a sudden, there's pressure. Now all of a sudden, if you don't make the basket, you're going to be seen not making the shot.

[00:11:12] So this kind of reminds me of that in some ways, this building in public. And that behind closed doors, we'll ask all the right questions all day long. We'll experiment. We'll break things. We'll learn. But then we step into public or into the public. And suddenly we feel the pressure. And we look like we have to have it all figured out. I've tried very hard not to do that with this podcast. I didn't start this show because I was the smartest guy in irrigation. I started because I was curious.

[00:11:42] And curiosity has always opened doors for me. Curiosity introduced me to people. Introduced me to the people I have brought onto the podcast. Curiosity has introduced me to ideas, to technology, to friendships. And this app feels very similar. Slide started with my own curiosity. Because estimating landscape water use feels too difficult, too fragmented, too many different approaches, too many different ideas.

[00:12:10] There were pieces everywhere. It's confusing. You have to incorporate things like plant factors, weather, rainfall, historical ET. And by the way, where are you going to find historical ET for every zip code in the United States? How about Hawaii? How about Canada? Where are you going to find this historical ET? It's not easy. You have to incorporate square footage, irrigation efficiency, restrictions, site conditions. And somehow hidden in all of this is a useful answer.

[00:12:42] Now, slide tries to help create a starting point. It's not perfect. It's not magic. It's not replacing design expertise. It's not replacing experience. It's just helping create a starting point. And because some of you are nerds like me, hopefully all of you guys have some nerd in you. Let me give you a little transparency around where some of this data comes from in the slide application that I'm building in public.

[00:13:07] For the U.S. weather and rainfall inputs, slide uses historical gridmet reference evapotranspiration and precipitation data that is averaged from 2001 to 2025. Why did I pick 2001 to 2025? Because it's actually running this information in real time. I don't have this all stored in a database.

[00:13:29] And so when you use a slide application and you click calculate, it might take five to 10 seconds to go pull all the data, crunch all the numbers and return it. If I did 20 years of ET, that would take much longer. So for now, I'm just using basically the last five years of data. For Canada, the historical climate information uses open Medio archive data.

[00:13:52] I know it sounds crazy, but that's an available weather source that I was able to find and connect to digitally open Medio. So again, I'm not predicting the future. This is not live weather. Just providing a practical historical foundation for planning and estimating. Planning new systems and estimating irrigation demand or landscape demand for existing systems.

[00:14:20] And this thing could go in a lot of directions. Maybe someday you upload your landscape plan. Maybe someday you upload a water bill. Maybe you upload site photos. Maybe it's for benchmarking. Maybe comparison across properties. Honestly, I don't know yet. I'm just building this tool, putting it out there. I would love to see how you use it. And that's exactly why I wanted to record this episode. Because I'd rather build this with people than build it alone.

[00:14:47] So if you're a contractor, what drives you crazy today? What takes too long? What information do clients never have? If you're a designer, what are the reports that matter? What outputs would help explain the value? If you're a consultant or a municipality, what tools should exist but don't? What would save time? Because I think the best technology eventually disappears. You stop thinking about the software.

[00:15:17] You just use it. And that's the goal. Not because software is cool. Not because dashboards are trendy. They're just useful. They're just practical. We're just helping people answer questions faster. So if you have ideas or frustrations, if you have opinions, if you want to send me some feedback, or you think I'm missing something, go try the app. Click the buoy. Send me a note. Because I would genuinely love your help.

[00:15:46] And who knows? Maybe slide becomes a tool. Maybe it becomes a movement. Maybe it changes the way you think about what you do, even if you're not using it. If it could just spark a thought about why you're doing something the way you're doing it. That would be amazing. But either way, let's build it together. I would love your input. And that's all I have for today. So thank you for listening. Thank you for being curious as always.

[00:16:12] And until next time, my friends, be a learn-it-all, not a know-it-all.