Riego: Your houseplants. Automatically watered.

Written by Ben

March 13, 2020

Story

The Riego Indoor Irrigation System was created by two pediatricians — Manuel Caceres, MD and his wife, Maria Caceres, MD. The duo had a great affinity for plants and gardening, which was hard to maintain with their busy travel schedules. To cope, they installed a commercial outdoor irrigation system in their greenhouse to automatically irrigate the plants. They used a water bib and a timer but their indoor plants couldn’t be automatically irrigated due to a lack of a water source. The pair couldn’t find a device for their living room that would automatically irrigate their plants.

In 2014, Dr. Caceres sought out to create the solution. He took a submersible water pump and placed it in a decorative vase filled with water in the middle of the living room. He connected the pump to thin pieces of tubing pulled from his greenhouse irrigation system, made a series of connectors, and paired the unit to an electrical timer. This early prototype was able to irrigate their plants automatically, intermittently and silently. It worked daily, not only when traveling, and only needed to be refilled every 3 to 4 weeks. Thus, Riego was born.

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