U of I student uses sun to water plants

URBANA — During his high school days, Trey Ward had a summer job watering municipal flower beds in Hinsdale.

Three days a week, he traveled around town with a tank holding hundreds of gallons of water, making sure planters got their fill.

To Ward, it seemed “a huge waste of municipal funds.”

The truck got low mileage, the plants didn’t always need water and the labor costs were sizable. Plus, to Ward, it didn’t seem like an environmentally sound use of water.

So when Ward took a class in product development at the University of Illinois, he vowed to come up with a more efficient system for dousing plants.

“It seemed, right out of the gates, to be a good idea,” said Brian Lilly, who taught the class.

Ward devised a solar-powered watering system equipped with a moisture sensor so water is delivered only when plants need it.

The system included a water-capture vessel, a small pump, a solar panel and the sensor, among other things.

Last year, he tested the system on a plot of pumpkins and cannas at Urbana’s Meadowbrook Park, using water from rain barrels.

This year the experiment will be repeated at the same site, perhaps with corn in the mix, said Randy Hauser, grounds maintenance supervisor for the Urbana Park District.

“This year will be a better test,” Hauser said. “I hope it’s a drier season than last year.”

In April, the project was selected as one of six winners of the Environmental Protection Agency’s P3 Award — short for People, Prosperity and the Planet.

Ward and teammate Ross Polk went to Washington, D.C., for the competition, which attracted 55 entrants from universities nationwide.

Ward hopes to use the $75,000 in winnings to bring the product to market.

This month, the 22-year-old student received a bachelor’s degree in general engineering, with a focus on product realization.

In late June, he expects to start work with Etherios, a consulting company. But until then, he plans to lay the groundwork for the watering system, which he calls Waterboy Solar.

“I hope everything is up and running in six months,” he said.

The big challenge, Ward said, will getting components at prices that allow the product to be affordable.

Ward said he wants to price the system in the $300 range, but to do that, he’ll have to “beat the costs out of it.”

“The key is to get the product out,” he said.

As for potential buyers, he intends to start with municipalities, and then move on to the home market.

“There are so many consumers with rain barrels, and there are some who don’t want to be out watering,” he said.

He’s already talked with some municipalities and the UI’s grounds maintenance staff about using the product.

According to the project description, the solar-powered system “will reduce 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions associated with flower planter upkeep and watering.”

Besides reducing vehicle emissions, the project aims to reduce the amount of water used to maintain plants.

Ward said 58 percent of all water use goes for lawn watering and other outdoor purposes, according to the American Water Works Association Research Foundation.

An abstract of Ward’s project says the product could save municipalities “millions of dollars annually.”

Two other teams from the UI took honors in this year’s EPA’s P3 competition.

Among the six winners was a UI team that sought an inexpensive way to remove arsenic and uranium from groundwater on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. They proposed using bone char to remove those elements from the water.

Another UI team got honorable mention for trying to develop an effective way to improve water quality in Cameroon. Water there had been contaminated with cattle waste.