ChatGPT plugin
Droughtless Sprinkler Planner
Ask ChatGPT how long and how often to water, and get an answer worked out from your local weather and soil instead of a rule of thumb.
What it does
- Sprinkler and drip schedules. Which days to water and how many minutes per zone, for a typical week this month and for the coming week’s forecast. Runs are split into cycles with soak time where water would otherwise run off, and allowed watering days are respected.
- Trees and shrubs. How many gallons to give a tree or shrub and how often, including newly planted trees.
- Evapotranspiration. Daily reference ET (ET₀) for any place and dates, and FAO-56 Penman-Monteith ET₀ from your own weather readings, with every intermediate value.
How to use it
In ChatGPT, open Plugins, search for Droughtless Sprinkler Planner and add it. Then ask in plain language, for example:
- “What should my sprinkler schedule be this month? Austin, St. Augustine lawn on spray heads.”
- “We can only water Tuesdays and Saturdays. How many minutes per zone? Lawn on rotors, shrubs on drip.”
- “How much water should I give my 25-foot oak tree in August?”
How it works
Water need is reference evapotranspiration (FAO-56) multiplied by a landscape plant factor (University of California / WUCOLS). The schedule for a typical week uses 10 years of weather history for the month and is set for a dry week; it also tells you how often rain covers a whole week so you know when to skip. The coming-week plan uses the 7-day forecast. Soil texture and water-holding capacity come from the USDA soil survey, which sets how much water each watering can hold and how fast it can go on before running off. The same calculations power the ET calculator on this site.
| Data | Source |
|---|---|
| Weather, ET₀, rain, forecast, elevation | Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) |
| Street addresses to coordinates | US Census Bureau geocoder |
| Soil texture and water-holding capacity | USDA NRCS Soil Data Access (SSURGO) |
Limitations. Soil data covers the United States only; elsewhere loam is assumed unless you say otherwise. Model weather can differ from a weather station in your yard. The plugin does not look up local watering restrictions; tell it which days you’re allowed to water. Results are estimates for planning, not a guarantee of plant health.
Privacy
Effective October 2, 2026
This section covers the Droughtless Sprinkler Planner plugin. Your use of ChatGPT itself is covered by OpenAI’s privacy policy.
What the plugin receives
- The details ChatGPT passes to the plugin to answer you: a location (place name, ZIP code, street address or coordinates), dates, and descriptions of your zones, plants, sprinklers and soil, or weather readings you provide.
- When you don’t name a place, ChatGPT’s approximate location hint (city, region and coarse coordinates).
- Anonymized identifiers and your language setting, which ChatGPT attaches to every plugin request.
What we do with it
- We use it only to compute your answer. We do not store your requests, create an account for you, or link requests to your identity.
- To compute the answer, the location is sent to Open-Meteo (weather), the US Census Bureau geocoder (street addresses only) and the USDA Soil Data Access service (soil). Nothing else from your request is sent to them.
- Weather, soil and elevation results are cached in the server’s memory by approximate location (about 1 km) so repeat lookups are faster: weather for hours to a week, soil for 30 days, elevation for up to a year, and all of it is cleared whenever the server restarts. The cache holds no request details or identifiers.
- Our hosting (Google Cloud Run) keeps standard request logs (time, path, status and the address of the calling server, which is OpenAI’s, not yours) for up to 30 days to keep the service running.
- We do not sell any information, use it for advertising, or use it to train AI models.
Questions or requests: privacy@droughtless.com. The full Droughtless privacy policy covers the rest of our products.
Terms
Use of the plugin is subject to the Droughtless Terms of Service. Watering schedules and ET values are estimates from public data and published methods; check your local watering rules and adjust for what you see in your landscape.
Support
Email contact@droughtless.com. If an answer looks wrong, include what you asked, the location, and what you expected; that is usually enough for us to reproduce it.