I like the concept of the new “as needed”, but it doesn’t mesh well with my Wed/Sat watering day restrictions.
What I’d like to do is have the following logic:
Watering events will only occur on Wed or Sat. If just prior to Wed run it is forecasted that no zone will drop below MAD by Sat (next watering opportunity), then skip watering. Otherwise water the zones, but base each zone’s watering duration by how long each will take to fill their water bucket back to “full”. I suppose this last requirement can be handled by making separate schedules for zones in full sun, partial shade, etc… (or group zones somehow by how long they typically go from full to MAD level) Prior to Sat run, repeat above logic.
With the current schedule options in 2.5, what will get me closest to the above?
I would just setup a fixed schedule for Wed/Sat. with all the fixin’s on. Climate skip will do exactly what you are asking for Durations will also be adjusted incrementally each month based on the current season.
Excellent. Can you throw in an enhancement request to determine climate skips on a per-zone as opposed to a per-schedule basis?
Algorithmically, if the Allowed Depletion of Zone - (Evapotranspiration - Precipitation) calculation is positive for a zone, set zone watering duration to zero for that day’s run.
True or false?
If one zone is close to MAD level while the others are only halfway between full and MAD and only the first zone is giving a negative calculation (thus not triggering a climate skip), the schedule will fill zone one, but overwater the other zones.
This is why I have a schedule per zone, I think that is going to work, we will see. Aqua monkey comes off the bench this Friday after I fix a few more issues.
I’m assuming multiple schedules can run in a day and interleave. Well I hope so at least. I’ll figure it out this Friday. That was the most fun thing to watch with flex, how the zones danced apart from each other.
I’m not either and I could stay flex, but I’m willing to pay the price if I can convince rachio to provide a “water as needed cause I’m a boss” option on the schedule to manage each zone by its mad.
I’ll even settle for a schedule precedence screen.
Either way, it will get better, this is the only way to find the sweet spot.
But look on the bright side, I know have 8 totally ridiculous schedule names to make me laugh each morning…
So created a Water As Needed last night, and it watered all zones today. Took 148 minutes to do 3 cycles across 7 zones.
Just turned that schedule off and am creating an individual WAN schedule per zone. Just finished zone 3, and for some reason it has them all running tomorrow (even though when the original WAN was active, the next water day wasn’t until next week). It also has the zones stacked, not interleaved, so there are 30 minute soak breaks where nothing’s happening. So with just three zones on individual WAN schedules, the total time (including soaks) is 3 hours 24 minutes, and I still have four zones to add. Looks like it’ll be running until after 9AM if I want each zone on its own schedule and they all happen to fall on the same day.
The dogs aren’t going to like that. Waterings always finished by 6AM’sh (all zones).
I’m right there with you. I want to love WAN, but my 6 WAN schedules (1-zone each) will now take 12 hours to complete due to all the 30-min soak cycles and non-interleaved structure. In contrast, a single 6-zone flex schedule typically took about 6 hours.
In general, it’s probably not necessary to schedule each zone individually. I believe best practice will be to group schedules based on crop type. So a schedule for grass, schedule for shrubs and a schedule for trees etc. That was really the intent, and not to make you create as many schedules as zones I think we are working up a support article to help clarify this. Sorry for the confusion.
Well, my issue is that I don’t want to water all my turf zones because the mad on 1 reached its deplition. sometimes the irrigation gets run for a while so the kids can play so moisture levels get out of sync from various zones. I also liked how flex would run 1-3 zones a day, so long waterings were never an issue. I don’t like to start earlier than 5 am as my short turf allows fungus to take hold pretty quickly, diseases that are not normally a problem for tif 419 become a problem when you are growing it in the stress zone, for me, .18-.25 inches depending on the time of year. Couple that with growth regulator so I can keep it that short, really allows disease to wreck the turf, quickly.
Plus now that drip tube is in the mix (different schedules), I would like to specify schedule priority. When I was on flex, drips ran last by artifact of the sort order of multiple schedules so that was not a problem, I’m still hoping that is the case, but I’ll let you know.
I’m just being a cry baby whom wants a whae burger with som French cries and a whyniken to drink.
Durations will also be adjusted incrementally each month based on the current season.
