I have two problems. 1) I have a 9 zone system watering 24,000 sf. When I go to set a schedule it wants to water basically everyday for an hour. That’s over 9 hours of watering 7 days a week. I need 3 hours to reach an inch but I want it infrequent to encourage root development. And 2) my local weather stations are not sending rain data so on multiple occasions my system turns on in the rain or the day after we had tremendous rain. Can someone please help me with these issues? Thank you.
What schedule are you using? Flex daily?
As for weather stations, consider looking at the nearby personal weather stations (PWS) and check their history to see if they have rain information.
Ya I was using flex daily. I found out it takes me 3 hours to water an inch and have read to water an inch per week. I’ll check other stations. The one that pops up is the airport so it’s surprising that no rain is collected.
I agree, 9 hours a day seems like a lot.
If it were me I would delete the existing schedule and start from scratch on a new flex daily (v.2.6) to make sure my zones were all set up normally.
Is this 3 hours constantly or 3 hours with soak intervals?
With flex daily, Don’t think about watering an inch. Think about applying your available water capacity until depleted. Some soils will not be able to hold an inch of water, so make sure your awc in advanced settings is correct.
Also with 9 zones all sitting in a flex daily, you should be able to do that in less than 9 hours unless you have rotary heads.
BUT Do not have emitters in the same flex, break those out a different flex.
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Well, i’m wondering what heads I have. They pop up and spray a single stream as they rotate. I set a couple cups in the yard and in exactly 1 hour I has 5/16" What’s the best way to set up my system?
Do they spray a steady stream or throw big drops of water?
That is a rotor head (not to be confused with a rotary or rotating).
I think they can be some work to set up, based on the angle of the arc and the nozzle installed.
great. So how does a novice homeowner with a large lawn do this?
Where are you? In the desert southwest watering every day would make sense. In the northeast, not so much.
I am sure you can. It sounds like your system is pretty much set up as it is.
I am not an expert, as I have only had my Iro a week now. I am still trying to dial in things, but for right now I am keeping everything default to see what happens.
There are just some things that are possible (based on brand) to swap the nozzles to dial in your coverage.
http://www.watertips.com/info/nozlflow.htm
What I would do in your position (being a non-profession, homeowner type) is based on your catch cup measurements (perhaps repeat, or test other areas) is create a custom nozzle for 0.3 in/hr and select those. The standard for the rotor type is 1"/hour. However, this will not get you to where you want to go, and this seems like it would triple your cycle time.
That is where the above information, changing a nozzle to get closer to the 0.5" hour or what have you.
Also make sure (as stated above) that you have the correct soil settings. perhaps some screen shots of your program would help.
I’ve created a custom nozzle and checked everything I know to check. I set up a flex monthly to see what would happen and it just wants to water every zone for 56 every other day. My local weather station at the local airport does not report perciptation. I guess I thought this controller would be more “intelligent”. I’m sure I’m the one that’s not intelligent though. I’m on a well in a rural area so i’m not so concerened with saving money or water, but got the controller to help with lawn quality. Did I make a mistake?
Where do you live (area, zip code, etc)?
What is your soil type and slope?
We know you are using rotor heads.
I don’t think you made a mistake, but I am not sure you are currently optimized.
I’m an hour south of St Louis, MO. Zip is 63640. I have sandy loam with mostly flat ground. A bit of slope on the sides of the house
You’re 100% about that pr? That is uncommonly low for a rotor explains why it takes so long
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I set up a rotor on sandy loam, full sun, flat, cool season grass and got a runtime of 37 minutes.
I don’t know if that is apples to apples or not.
well I was using the custom nozzle that I said puts out .33"/hr. I’m 100% sure that the coffee cups I set out measured 5/16" after an hour, but it’s highly likely that I did that wrong. I feel like 3 hours is an insane long time. That would mean it would take me 27 hours to water my yard each week.
@thegrindstaffs. How tall were the cups? You want a fairly low profile container with a wide opening. If you used something more than a couple of inches tall a significant amount of water would be hitting the side of the cup instead of going in.
You should catch cups, there is a certain profile that should be used.
But I’ll state it again, I think flex is behaving correctly with such a low pr