I saw a post on another site somewhere that stated with IFTTT it could trigger the IRO to pulse zones if freezing temps? I don’t see this in the recipes on IFTTT site. Any help would be appreciated.
New to IRO myself but I do like the idea of pulsing zones should there be a freeze coming through to prevent pipes from freezing, unless there is a better solution?
Also, I see in the IFTTT recipes there is one for rain delay; what is the difference between this and the weather intelligence built into the app?
Thanks, great product!
ps: Glad to see this product is made in Colorado (native myself!)
I think the easiest way to do this, if you just wanted to cycle the zones for let’s say one minute each, is to create a watering time in our mobile app with one minute per zone, and then disable the schedule.
In IFTTT, if weather gets below freezing just trigger that schedule to start.
Rain delay in IFTTT and weather intelligence in our app are essentially the same. In IFTTT you are using another channel to trigger a rain delay, in our app for weather intelligence we essentially look at yesterday’s weather and today’s weather for precipitation and skip the schedule if we hit a certain threshold. Some people have used IFTTT and will trigger a rain delay if temperature hits a certain threshold. We also will skip if temperature hits 32 degrees (hopefully this will be configurable soon).
Got to love Colorado, we are Downtown a few blocks from Coors Field
Let us know if you have any other questions or feedback. Thanks!
Thanks for the reply. I think this will work great to pulse the lines for 1 round but will that be enough? Should I make a recipe for each degree it goes down to cycle it every so often?
Sorry, really new to sprinkler systems and i saw all my neighbors de-winterizing their systems so I did mine, not even thinking. I’m worried that if we get another cold snap before the season is over it could cause problems. My neighbor did say that it would have to get close to 0 degree weather overnight before the ground would get cold enough to freeze the lines. I do know water freezes at 32 degrees… just trying to play it safe and use my new controller to the fullest.
I did see our HOA grounds crew getting the sprinklers going over the weekend as well and im sure they aren’t using a smart controller!
Hi @djkms, good morning! Great questions – many people forget about their sprinklers when the temperatures start to dip.
A sprinkler system’s achilles heel in seasonal areas where there’s a risk of freezing is the exposed copper piping (could also be PVC piping) that comes from the house to the PVB (backflow preventer) to the manifold in the ground. This is where the system will freeze on those nights if it’s going to. Your neighbor’s comments are true for pipes in the ground, but those are always the last to freeze
I’d recommend pulsing the lines every hour for even a minute will help to eliminate any stagnant water from freezing. Being able to automate this via IFTTT makes it a very simple insurance program until you’re ready to shut down the system for the fall (or start the system early in the spring).
I hope this helps. Let us know if you have any other questions or concerns.
Thanks for the reply. Can you walk me through how to set up a recipe to pulse every hour? I don’t see an easy way to do this.
I do see in the app itself you can choose repeat but there are only options to chose specific days or intervals (number of days only). Might I suggest adding minutes/hours to this section with a option to choose how many times to run it for? (should I put this in the suggestions section?)
