Initial watering times

Can someone shed some light on how the initial watering times are computed when creating a new schedule? Is it the amount of time needed to supply water to bring a zone from its MAD level to full?

Doing some tests, it looks to be dependent on initial watering days allowed. If I say just Wed, I get 23 minutes for a particular zone. If I say Wed and Sat, I get 10 minutes for that same zone.

I’d like an answer to this, too. When I set it up, it wanted to water zones for like 30 minutes each! I turned it down to 12 because previously with my “dumb” controller, my lawn sprinkler company had it set to 5 minutes per zone.

@wx16 and @MikeElmendorf: The watering time calculation is different for As Needed vs On an Interval or Specific Days. For As Needed schedules, yes it will calculate duration based on water needed to bring a zone from MAD to field capacity. This is using a soil depletion model. For On an Interval and Specific Days schedules, the durations are calculated using a water budget model. Basically, we determine how much water your plants need per month based on historical ET and divide it between all the waterings. Remember, we still use Climate Skip on all of these schedule types to account for current ET and precipitation.