I just set up my controlled and was surprised on the watering times for my drip lines. I live in San Diego and it has my drip lines watering 2h and 24min. It is only watering once every 1.5 weeks but wouldn’t that length of watering just pool my flowerbeds? It seems very excessive when I was just watering them 3 times a week for 5 min.
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Can’t really say it is excessive without knowing what kind of drip you have. If you were only watering for 5 minutes, I’m guessing you have high flow bubblers or something as opposed to drip. Bubblers can put out multiple gallons per minute. My system has 2 gallon per hour emitters (various quantity per tree depending on size), and my tree zone runs for over 3 hours.
How do I find out the type of drip system I have?
I guess you could start by posting a picture and we can try to identify…
Looks like a drip line to me, as you said. I could be wrong though.
So with it being a traditional drip line, a watering of 2hr and 24min could be normal?
I am leaving that for someone that has used drip line before, I have not used it in a long time (definitely pre-Rachio & in small raised beds).
Totally understand, thank you for your help.
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Yea, that is what is known as soaker hose, or dripline.
In the mean time, if 5 minutes 3 times a week worked prior, you could set up fixed schedules with that. I struggle to believe that 5 minutes is really enough to water “correctly” but apparently it was enough to keep the vegetation alive prior…
I’m with @Thomas_Lerman, I haven’t worked with this stuff in my own yard, so I don’t have a ton of experience with it. What I do know, is that there are a number of different types, with different emitter spacing, and emitter flow rates. To really calculate the precipitation rate (inches per hour), you need to know spacing and output of each emitter on the hose. Are there any markings on the hose that you can see to indicate brand, or more importantly, water output? A lot of them on the market have 1gph emitters spaced 6"-24" apart. With that, you could assume that some of the plants might have 1-3 emitters near them, depending on how the hose is ran. So, if you were to run for 1 hour, each plant would get 1-3 gallons of water. Not sure what all types of vegetation you have in these beds, but that could be enough for the smaller flowers, but light on any larger shrubs. On the flip side, 5 minutes of run time will only put down .08-.25 gallons of water per run. Not sure if that is enough, but you said it worked…
Once we have the details of the dripline, I’d say the next thing to really know is the type of vegetation. If it is predominately annuals or perennials, set the zone up as a flower bed as this will shrink the root depth, causing it to water more frequently. If these are annuals or perennials, they shouldn’t be watered like shrubs.
Your 5 minutes three times a week was probably needed because you were only keeping moisture in the top level of the soil. The Rachio is watering longer as it is trying to get moisture to the full root depth and then pausing until it reaches your set depletion percentage.
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Drip lines in general are meant to allow you to water the soil a lot and get the moisture down deep. This allows for deeper roots and more healthy plants in general. Assuming they are plants that establish deeper roots.
The type soil you have also affects these numbers. There are a lot of settings for every zone and every time you tweak one thing you affect how long or how often something will water.
In my experiment longish run times and not as often have made my plants flourish. But the exact amount is not easy to say. At one point mine wanted to water a couple hours each once every two weeks or so. I had to do some tweaks to it was a little under that time and closer to a week and a half.
Dialing in can take some time and trial and error. Especially if you are drastically changing how you water you want to watch your plants and may need to hand water a little once in a while at first to help train your plants to grow deport roots…
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I’m stuck on this as well. I’ve got a whole house water monitor and when the drip line is on im showing 1.2-1.4 GPM. The previous owner has (or maybe its Rachio default) nozzle inches per hour set a .5in. Does that feel right?
Yup, the same happened to me, and I almost freaked out. I have an area of 4,582 square feet, and when I first set it up, it told me it was about to water for about an hour in each zone. I have a total of six zones, and I said heck no. I used this website to calculate the sqft in my SOD. I used this website, Yard Area Calculator | Super-Sod, to calculate the sq ft in my yard.
All that is sub surface soaker hose?