GETTING STARTED
Introduction To FullStop

The FullStop Wetting Front Detector is a radically different concept, designed to help improve the accuracy of irrigation.

A FullStop Wetting Front Detector needs no wires, batteries, computers or loggers. But just because the instrument is simple, it does not mean it won't change the way you irrigate!

The FullStop shows you how deep the water has penetrated into the soil after irrigation. It also stores a sample of water from the soil so fertilizer and salt levels can be monitored.

What is a wetting front?

When rain falls on dry soil, the top layer of soil gets wet.
The same is true when you use sprinklers.
No wetting front is visible at the surface.

If this wet layer is scraped aside, dry soil is revealed underneath. If the rain was light,or irrigation was short, the wet layer might be a centimetre or two deep. Heavy rain or longer irrigation would move much deeper.

Most soils are a darker colour when wet, so it is easy to see the separation between the wet soil above and the dry soil below. The line of separation marks the wetting front.

If the soil was wet before irrigation, a wetting front will still move down into the soil, but it is not easy to see by eye because there is no colour contrast. If a lot of water was applied, the front may go down half a metre or more. In such cases it is not so easy to dig a hole and check.

We built a Wetting Front Detector to tell how deep the wetting front has moved. The FullStop Wetting Front Detector is buried in the soil and pops up an indicator flag when a wetting front reaches it.

With drip irrigation it is possible to see the wetting front on the surface. A wet patch develops immediately under the emitter or dripper.

Digging the soil away under two drippers reveals two columns of wet soil.