Orlin Reinbold Moisture Gauge Producer Awaits Flood Of Interest From Around World

When QVC home shopping network begins hawking the Moisture Smart evaporation gauge this week, don’t look to see Orlin Reinbold under hot lights.

He’ll be at his South Spokane home watching his 9-inch device monitor yard sprinklers, while orders come in from such hot spots at Israel, India and Oakland, Calif.

Toss out the tuna cans, turn down the sprinklers.

For $25, Reinbold will sell you a backyard weather station that takes the guess work out of watering your lawn and garden.

“We put it up against a $12,000 weather station at Oregon State University, and it matched it perfectly,” Reinbold says of Moisture Smart, a cylindrical green gauge that he’s selling worldwide.

Unlike the common rain gauge, or an open tuna can that collects rain and irrigation water, Moisture Smart also measures the rate of evaporation that occurs after the lawn is doused. Using the gauge to keep the water level constant, homeowners may stop oversprinkling and save money and water.

Some water experts say consumers won’t use Reinbold’s device. In Spokane, where water is cheap and plentiful, few people are clamoring for the product. Northwest Seed & Pet, the only local retailer carrying the device, says it has sold only a couple since October.

But in the Middle East, Southwestern United States and many metropolitan areas where water supplies are fragile, Moisture Smart has begun to catch on as a money-saving conservation tool.

Since introducing the device last fall, Reinbold says he has sold 10,000 units. He forecast sales of 1 million units per year by 1997 - a claim that gets a heady boost this week when QVC begins peddling Moisture Smart to 10 million viewers.

“I don’t think he (Reinbold) will have any problem selling a lot of them,” says Glenn Boettcher, water conservation coordinator for the city of Mercer Island, an east Seattle suburb. “It’s real simple. Just about anybody can use it.”

Reinbold, a Davenport, Wash., native and 1973 graduate of Washington State University’s College of Agriculture, says he wasn’t smart enough to invent the evaporation gauge. So he bought the rights to the device from inventor Christopher Browne, owner of Moisture Dynamics Inc., a Corvallis, Ore., developer of moisture sensors.

“When Chris (Browne) was ready to sell it, someone told him, ‘Call Orlin: He’s got money and knows business,”’ Reinbold recalls.

Browne’s advisors were correct. Orlin, a skinny 44-year-old with a deep voice, had pocketed a tidy sum in 1990 when he sold the family business, Davenport Seed Co.

In less than a decade, Reinbold had turned Davenport Seed into a major distributor of lawn and forage seed. A conservationist, Reinbold also drew attention in the grass seed industry by denouncing the annual practice of burning fields to stimulate plant growth.

But restless without a company to run, Reinbold invested $200,000 into developing Moisture Smart. He hired two Spokane companies - Altek Machining & Molds Inc. and Sonderen Packaging - to manufacture and package the device, which looks like a large automatic sprinkler.

“This could be a huge company if I don’t go broke first,” says Reinbold, who owns homes on the South Hill and at Schweitzer Mountain Resort.

Reinbold reaps $5 for each Moisture Smart sale. The gauge retails for $24.95; half that to water utilities and other bulk buyers.

John Swindell, water conservation representative for the East Bay Municipal Utility District in Oakland, Calif., says the utility is considering distribution of thousands of Moisture Smart units to its 1 million customers.

“It’s designed to be a little weather station,” Swindell says. “I’ve seen hundreds of products cross my desk, but this is the only one that assists the customer in applying water.”

Others say Moisture Smart is too complicated and expensive to help the average homeowner.

“If it doesn’t turn the water off, I’m not inclined to buy it,” says Anna Thurston, head of the Tacoma Public Utilities Water conservation program.

Reinbold says that in the future he and Browne plan to spin off several other Moisture Smart products, including one that will adjust automatic sprinkler systems.

“This thing is just starting to go,” Reinbold says.