Manually turning on the pump

Hi, quick question for the community before I buy the Gen 3. I just bought a home that has a pump that feeds the irrigation system from a lake and I’m going to replace the existing controller with a Rachio (have a Gen 1 at my other house and love it).

The issue I have is that the pump currently serves both the irrigation system (3 zones) and also a hose spigot on the dock (through a T-connector off of the irrigation supply line). I’d like to be able to turn on the pump whenever I need to use the hose spigot but doing so without running the irrigation system - is there a way to do this either from the Gen 3 directly or through the app? What’s the best way to do so?

Thanks!

Hi George, welcome to the club :wink:

One, quick, option is to create a “Dock” zone, using any of the otherwise unused zones within your system. This would take up one of the available zones, but it sounds like you have at least 5 to spare.

Going further, you can even add an extra valve (in you wish) and hook it up to the zone you’ve chosen for the dock. This would ensure that the spigot is inactive unless you explicitly turn it on, though it sounds like a leaky spigot would not be a problem by the water.

When ever you will be making an irrigation schedule, simply keep the “Dock” zone unused and it should not activate when not needed.

Both Gen 2 and 3 will allow you to turn on your “Dock” zone via an app or directly via the controller’s interface.

Cheers,
Gene

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Gene, thanks for the welcome and thanks for the quick reply! Sounds like the perfect solution - will go with it. Thanks again!

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