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Breaking up watering times is broken

#1

@franz @mckynzee

Thought I’d start a new thread on this since my original thread got polluted.

Mckynzee said that if I have a slope on one of my zones, that it breaks up all the zones into multiple waterings. She also said that if all the zones had a slope that they would all be broken up into multiple waterings, so I set a slope to all my zones, yet they still refuse to break up waterings. If the zone I originally had a slope to runs, they get broken up. If it’s not included, they don’t

I set ALL zones to slope and deleted and recreated my flex schedule and yet they still refuse to break up the waterings. I’d like to increase my root depth but I can’t because of this behavior. Right now it gets pretty saturated and I get runoff, so the last thing I need is to water longer without breaking the waterings up.

Can you get this fixed?

Thanks,

Mike

#2

Mike-

We may have already covered this, but have you ensured that you have smart cycle enabled on your controller, and that there are no drip zones included in the schedule in question? If so, my next question would be do you have a gen 1 or gen 2 controller? What Type of soil do you have, and what type of nozzles are you using?

McKynzee

#3

Hi @mckynzee,

Smart Cycle is ON and no drip zones (all grass). Gen 2 controller, Hastings Silty Loam, Hunter Rotors (#6 Nozzle) on ALL zones except zone 3 which has Rain Bird Fixed, and that’s the one that DOES cycle. Hmmm…

Let me know what you think.

Thanks!

Mike

#4

@mckynzee

I think I may have figured this out? When I was typing above, I forgot that I had different heads on the zone that was working. The 6 zones that wouldn’t break up are pretty low precip (.36" per hr) while the zone that works is high precip (2.80" per hour).

I’m thinking that since they’re such low precip nozzles that it doesn’t think a pause is warranted? I set them up at 1.36" per hour as a test and they did indeed break up the schedule, so I think I may have answered my own question?

What do you think?

Mike

#5

I bet that is absolutely what changed it! While I know your nozzles are custom, check out this chart for comparison. For rotor heads (0.7 in/hr), with loam soil, and highest slope, a zone can run 29 minutes without cycling! Based on that low precip rate, you should probably be able to run almost an hour without soaking in your set up. Are you sure that your precip rate is correct?

#6

I’m just using the data from the manufacturer for precip data at 180 degree rotation and 50psi. I think I need to do the catch cup thing and really try to nail this down.

Hope V3 has an option to force cycle waterings. That would be nice!

Thanks,

Mike

#7

I think there is room for improvement on allowing users to have more control over cycle/soak! Let us know how catch cup tests go, I would be surprised if it were that low, but it’s completely possible!