A world first!

A video of the whole process is under production but meanwhile the live data is available on our website:

• http://www.vanwalt.com/telemetry-system: Soil Moisture.

Soil moisture and soil conductivity data from different soil horizons on the steep bank outside our office is shown at regular intervals throughout the day and, if you were to look at it now you would see it recording the lovely warm temperatures we have been experiencing over the last week here in Haslemere.

Our supplier IMKO is a small, very high tech company which produces award winning equipment for the determination of soil moisture. This is a family business; father, son, daughter and in laws all seem to work together harmoniously to produce products of excellence. And it’s refreshing to know that Kurt, the founder is far more interested in extracting the last one percent accuracy from his probes than he is in anything else. If the slogan Vorsprung durch Technik had not been kidnapped by Audi it would certainly have been very to the point for IMKO.

What is really refreshing about this trial is that despite a few minor teething problems – usually our mistake not the equipment - it’s been a pleasure to work with IMKO to solve issues.  The business is interested in listening to our concerns and working with us to ensure as near perfect piece of equipment as is possible.

The TDR (Time Domain Reflectrometry) technology we are working with here delivers very accurate determination of soil moisture content. This technology is very specialised and thanks to the hard work of our supplier we can offer this equipment and systems at prices equivalent to good quality capacitance probes.

Click here for details of our new range of equipment for soil moisture readings for top layers, manual soil profiling and automatic soil profiling systems.