Is it just me, or does “when needed” completely lack the ability to comply with watering restrictions??? I’m restricted to certain days of the week. I’d love to be able to say water “when needed” but only on my legally allowed watering days.
I know I could set up a fixed schedule, but I paid this much for this system precisely to get something better than a timer.
Hi @steve28, a Specific Day schedule with Climate Skip enabled (it’s enabled by default) is actually quite intelligent. Here’s some information on the Climate Skip feature:
Would you mind sharing what your restrictions are?
I can only water tu, th, And sun. Technically for no more than 8 min per zone unless using a “water conserving nozzle” whatever that means. I interpret the latter to also include an Iro. This is LA Department of Water and Power - I would expect you have many customers with this same style of restriction.
Essentially, it seems I with the “improved” system I could get the same functionality with a rain sensor and a timer…
Also,
Why do you water ALL zones in a schedule if only one is dry??? That drives me to have to make a schedule per zone… Fine. Except now, IT STACKS ALL SCHEDULES. so if zone 1 is in a 30 min smart cycle pause, it doesn’t move on to another zone and then come back, it just sits idle doing nothing. C’mon, this isn’t rocket science… Especially for a product in Generation 2
i don’t need to take 6 hours to water my lawn.
I have similar restriction in Las Vegas. I can only water on Tues, Thurs, Sat, and only before 11AM or after 7PM. I have 3 turf zones and 5 drip zones. I water the turf 3 times a day and the drip once a day. To accomplish this I have 3 fixed schedules for the turf (7AM, 10:30AM, 7PM) and one for the drip (8AM). All of these schedules are controlled by climate skip and each watering day I get a message as to whether the schedule will run or not based on prior or forecast rainfall.
@steve28 & @Khillski – not sure if you’d like to continue your discussion on restrictions for As Needed schedules, but if so, let’s move it to this thread moving forward:
In Clark County Nevada (Las Vegas Metro), the watering restrictions vary according to season. Summer is six days per week (never on Sunday) Spring (defined as March 1 to April 30) is 3 days per week (for me with an even address… Tu, Th, Sa, but for people with odd addresses … Mo, We, Fr), winter (defined to be Nov 1 thru Feb 29) is one day per week by geographic (one of six) zones… painted on a map of the area. I live north of Cheyenne, so I am in group A, thus Mondays only in winter. No watering on windy days (but I think that assumes sprinklers, and I have almost all bubblers (just a few sprinklers that are all very sheltered from wind). The details can be found here: https://www.lvvwd.com/conservation/mandatory-watering-schedule/index.html It would be great if you could ‘manage’ the supply of water yet still comply with the water restrictions, that (as you can see) vary by address, not just day of the week.
I’d like to add that getting the watering right while adhering to the regional restrictions (which all by themselves are complex) will likely require some sort of predictive capability - not just historical look into recent weather conditions, but also accounting for expected wind, rain, infrared radiation, relative humidity, … AND the restrictions on watering days and times. If you are going to do this right, you really need a machine learning / prediction capability. It is clearly no longer a sensor driven (reactive) control system, but one that accounts for numerous constraints AND expectations. FYI, I can help you with that - I have a world record breaking machine learning technology (developed in post-grad) that crushes what you can achieve using open source. Let me know…