Need some guidance here.
Ok I am a little lost here. I have set up my RMT HD12 Series 3. Set up all the zones with SF and GPM flow rates. With my old system I was watering a set time amount based off of my GPM. I know that I can go in there and set my schedule up to use custom times per zone, but I would like to take in effect the weather conditions such as rain/wind, evap losses, and other weather changes that would affect the amount of water needed. I have set up the slope, ground cover and soil types per zone.
Now, when I set up a program/schedule I am getting run times of 2 to 3 hours for the zones and this is not making sense to me at all. I have set up NOAA, Wunderground and I am awaiting my rain collector to arrive for my Netatmo. That being said I have looked at the NOAA and Wunderground forecasts and the temps are to be...
M - 75/48° w/no rain predicted.
T - 57/47° w/rain of 0.30" predicted.
W - 77/51° w/rain of 0.13" predicted.
Th - 86/61° w/no rain predicted.
F - 83/58° w/no rain predicted.
I guess my question here is if I want to put down 3/4" of water with an average run time of 25 - 42 minutes per zone depending on zone per week....why is the system wanting to run the 2 - 3 hours of time for zone per week? I understand it is based on a weekly run, but my lawn and gardens do not need this much water per week, even during the summer to retain proper growth and conditions.
yes, I am running
the latest FW
I have rebooted the system
I am trying to set this up properly. I have used in the past the OLD setup of manually entering run times into my old setup and divided the time for 2 runs per week, thus it would run a total 11 - 22 min/zone depending on the zone. Now that we are in the fall and the temps have dropped I would be dropping my watering down to 1/2 an inch total per week.
I seem to be lost here if it is wanting to water for 3 hours when 45m will give me 3/4" that is needed per week.
Ideas, input, information is helpful.
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More info if needed.
-- Vegetation type - All but 2 zones are set up as lawn. There are 2 zones set for Trees/shrubs.
-- Soil - Clay (except for 2 zones that have my shrubs which I completely dug out 30" of clay and replaced with loam.) The 2 zones reflect that.
-- Slope - flat (except for 2 zones in the backyard that have approximately 20 degree slope) The 2 zones reflect that.
-- Sprinkler Head type - these are set to custom. I have inputted the info based off of 3 differing sets of information. Catchcup test, Data sheets from manufacturer and ZW meter flow. I used the median based off all three.
-- Sun/shade - all zones set for proper setup. First two zones have 80% shade through the day. Zones 3&7 have 60% and the remaining are under 10% shade. Reflected as such in setup.
-- GPM per zone was set up per the flow rates of each head. So if zone 1 had 3 FPN at a GPM of 0.39 each I set z1 to reflect a total of 1.17GPM.
-- SF - I measured/calculated the SF per zone based upon the pattern coverage of each head and added an additional 1.5 feet on each side for soak coverage/wind disruption Every zone is setup this way.
Now call me crazy, but I have been using data from NOAA, Wunderground, Evapotranspiration data from TAMU and have been using their irrigation watering recommendations for the last 6 years. I've had the best lawn for 8 months out of the last 3 years per our HOA. Yea, I do proudly wear that sign on my yard.
I actually bought this setup to help me spend less time doing the info research for times to run and then doing the adjustments to old controller. My old setup I had to replug in..as it as shot. It would randomly just run a zone or all even when set to the off position for the last 3 weeks. Hence getting a new unit. I hated sitting in front of it inputting times per zone click by click. Average time just to program my old unit was 12 minutes. Include the time to pull data from NOAA, Wunderground and the ET data from TAMU I was looking at a good 30 minutes. 30 I could spend doing something else.
Sorry for getting long winded. I hope I have included enough information. Am I just going to have to run custom programs on this and continue with my data pulls manually? -
Hi, John
We replied you back on ticket support.
For general information let's keep the conversation public here on our forums. Thank you.Sorry for the misunderstanding, but the SF (square feet zone area) and GPM (gallons per minute) data are used only for water consume/saved reports. Those data do not affect watering times.
The most impact on zones watering times comes from the Sprinkler Head Type, then from Vegetation type and Sun Exposure this, of course, associated with weather data available for your location.You said you used Custom sprinkler head types for all your zones. Can you tell us the Precipitation Rate and Application Efficiency for each zone? Can you also tell us what value do you get for Suggested daily summer watering time and the frequency of your program? If it's 1 time per week the time shown on Suggested daily summer watering time is multiplied by 7. Maybe the resulting median number it's increasing that time.
We will also want to know how do you input evapotranspiration data from TAMU and Farmlogs for your RainMachines locations, by a custom weather parser?
You can upload your RainMachine diagnostics by going to RainMachine mobile/web app: Settings - System Settings - About - Send Diagnostics.
After the upload process is done we will have your RainMachine data on our debug servers and we can look for the issue.
Thank you, John
RainMachine Support -
I ill reply point by point and quote your comments/questions in italics on here so we can keep thing straight.
Hi, John
We replied you back on ticket support.
For general information let's keep the conversation public here on our forums. Thank you.I replied on the ticket too. Just stating that I would reply on here.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, but the SF (square feet zone area) and GPM (gallons per minute) data are used only for water consume/saved reports. Those data do not affect watering times.
Ok, I still entered the information and it is in there. I was under the impression that it would give some sort of effect to flow rates. Either way, it is in there.
The most impact on zones watering times comes from the Sprinkler Head Type, then from Vegetation type and Sun Exposure this, of course, associated with weather data available for your location.This is what I have set up.
You said you used Custom sprinkler head types for all your zones.
I have since reset the data to just the generic data. Even after doing this I have gotten the same/similar results.
Can you tell us the Precipitation Rate and Application Efficiency for each zone?
I based the PR on the total number of heads per zone and the datasheets from the manufacturer So if zone one has 2 popup heads and the DS from the manufacturer stated that the PR is 2.28 per popup that would mean that my PR should be 4.56. I took into consideration the following info from here and came up with similar information.
http://irrigation.wsu.edu/Content/Calculators/Sprinkler/Sprinkler-Application-Rate.php
Now, I know that 1 inch of water amounts to 0.62 gal/sf So if I multiply 0.62 x SF it will equal Y. Now I have to take into account my GPM per head per zone. So I would take Y and divide it by the total GPM of my heads per zone.
Now the application efficiency per zone I had placed catch cans in a pattern throughout the yard. I also, did depth tests for water penetration. I also had my old professor from TAMU come out and do soil tests, water penetration tests thoughout the yard. . I am not at home and that information is at home on my desktop. I can post that data when I get back home.
Can you also tell us what value do you get for Suggested daily summer watering time and the frequency of your program? If it's 1 time per week the time shown on Suggested daily summer watering time is multiplied by 7. Maybe the resulting median number it's increasing that time.RM Suggested Zone 1 - 13min 4sec
RM Suggested Zone 2 - 10min 27sec
RM Suggested Zone 3 - 10min 27sec
RM Suggested Zone 4 - 52min 59sec
RM Suggested Zone 5 - 52min 59sec
RM Suggested Zone 6 - 12min 18sec
RM Suggested Zone 7 - 10min 27sec
I am restricted to 2 days per week to water. Doing this (multiplying by 7) is where I am seeing the odd numbers. BUT here is one of my base watering schedules I had last summer when I could not get the data from TAMU.
OLD SETUP ZONE 1 - 15min
OLD SETUP ZONE 2 - 10min
OLD SETUP ZONE 3 - 10min
OLD SETUP ZONE 4 - 60min
OLD SETUP ZONE 5 - 60min
OLD SETUP ZONE 6 - 15min
OLD SETUP ZONE 7 - 10min
This OLD SETUP schedule was run one time per week. No other schedules were ran at the time. I did split the ZONE 4 and ZONE 5 to eliminate run off. Now this will put down 1 inch of water on my property. SO that being said. The RM SUGGESTED is what I need to run in a week. Not daily. This is what bothers me. I have never run my system, even when we did not have water restrictions more than 2 times a week. When it was run 2 times a week was when temps hit 105 F and was there for several days. I wanted to make sure my lawn was not stressed out.
We will also want to know how do you input evapotranspiration data from TAMU and Farmlogs for your RainMachines locations, by a custom weather parser?
I think you misunderstood my info above in the previous posts. I take the data I got from TAMU, farmlogs, NOAA and Wunderground and figured a rolling average to work out my timing on my OLD SETUP with my RAINBIRD controller not on my RainMachine.
You can upload your RainMachine diagnostics by going to RainMachine mobile/web app: Settings - System Settings - About - Send Diagnostics.
After the upload process is done we will have your RainMachine data on our debug servers and we can look for the issue.
Thank you, John
RainMachine Support
I will do that in a few. -
Hi John,
So basically the *daily* duration suggested by RainMachine, matches the duration that you have used 1 time per week in your previous setup (ie 7 times bigger). ?
I guess these OLD SETUP times were computed based on a sum of evapotranspiration for 7 days in a week ? RainMachine daily suggested duration uses your zone settings to compute the duration needed to replace the missing water due to your location ET Average (which is a rolling average over 20 years for summer).
What we are missing to check is the precipitation rate/application efficiency set for your custom sprinkler head. It would be quicker just to post a screenshot with your zone settings from Web UI. We will also need your average EvapoTranspiration which can be seen in Web UI > Settings > Weather > Weather Services - Comparison > ET Tag > Summer Average (the blue line).
While we investigate you can set your OLD SETUP duration on zones as custom timers. The custom timer feature was especially created for people coming from old controllers and know exactly how much they water and their plants are healthy.
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I uploaded as requested and have not heard back. Just so you are aware. My schedule is all screwed up fo work and dealing with a son that is ranked #1 in the division for Golf I spend pretty much all waking hours(less work) with him so responses my be slow.
I have attached two images. One of the WM ET information and one from the TAMU site that uses NOAA data from a location less than a mile from my house.
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From the screenshots looks like RainMachine computed ET0 (from weather) is a little lower than what TAMU reports. We're using a version of Penman-Monteith formula not sure what TAMU uses. This shouldn't be a problem.
The previous questions still remain:
The *daily* duration suggested by RainMachine, matches the duration that you have used 1 time per week in your previous setup (ie 7 times bigger) ?
I guess these OLD SETUP times were computed based on a sum of evapotranspiration for 7 days in a week ?As I'm not sure what formulas were used in computing the OLD SETUP timers so I can't say why there is such a big difference but our formulas pass the WaterSense certification so our results should not waste water.
As we mentioned the Precipitation Rate has the biggest impact, what was the PR that you computed using the catch cup test ?
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The PR I calculated using multiple catch cans in the zone. I took the totals of each CC in the zone and got the average. For example, if I collected 0.25"(average over the total zone) during a 15 minute watering period that would mean that I applied an inch of water over an hour. I did this per zone. I also used the manufacturers performance charts and used the formula of
PR=(96.25xTotal GPM)/Total area. With this I was able to determine that my PR using the CC method was was within +/- 0.05.
Now to address the other information:
I use the Texas ET Network (http://texaset.tamu.edu). They use the Penman - Monteith formula as well. To convert that data into usable watering advice I use a warm season grass coefficient and a quality factor to determine watering needs of my lawn for the week.
The warm season grass of Bermuda that I have for my lawn I will use the following grass coefficient depending on the season. This is based off of TAMU information.
These numbers will change depending on the season.
April - September = 0.60
March and October = 0.30
November - February = 0.10
The pre-determined quality factor I've been using since we started is 0.60, which is representative of "Normal stress."
The formula for calculating the water needs of my lawn is as follows =
[(Cumulative 7-day ET) x (Warm season grass coefficient) x (quality factor)] - rainfall for the week = watering needs for my lawn.
Further explanation of the above factors can be found in the image attached.
It is ill advised to water my lawn on a daily basis. Doing so would not be a good thing because it promotes shallow root growth and doesn't give my grass a chance to grow roots deeper into the soil to seek out the moisture, which is something that all drought tolerant plants have in common. The way I have been watering my lawn for the last several years here is to allow it to get into a slight stressed state and letting it seek the moisture, THUS promoting deeper roots and a more drought tolerant lawn.
So I have a question. Are the ET values the system is using based on a 100% replacement of ET losses (quality factor of 1.0 vs. 0.6). ?? -
ET values are not replaced 100%, a crop coefficient is used which can be found at zone settings/vegetation type.
The value is visible only if "Custom" is selected as vegetation type, the lawn has 0.8 there.Seasonal adjustments are automatically done based on ET because ET is much lower at winter and much higher in summer.
However You have the possibility to use monthly coefficients by setting "custom" as vegetation type and setting "multiple monthly values" at the crop coefficient. We recommend this type of setup for agricultural crops (which are growing and have very different plant coefficient from one month to another).
The crop coefficient can be calculated in many ways, can be a pure crop coefficient, can include microclimate or density multipliers as well.
A good input about plant coefficients are in this book in chapter 2:
https://www.amazon.com/Estimating-Irrigation-Landscape-Plantings-California/dp/B003XO1PL8/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?_encoding=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&%2Aentries%2A=0
Older link is here but at this moment is not working: http://www.water.ca.gov/wateruseefficiency/docs/wucols00.pdfWe plan to release a new feature which will permit "adaptive frequency" exactly for deeper roots promotion - this will irrigate with different frequency in summer and winter. The feature is right now in alpha release, probably soon we will release it in beta for customer testing.
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ET values are not replaced 100%, a crop coefficient is used which can be found at zone settings/vegetation type.
The value is visible only if "Custom" is selected as vegetation type, the lawn has 0.8 there.I actually made a post in the suggestion area regarding this....or should I say a way to further get adaptations in the vegetation area. I wont address them here though.
You state the Type "Lawn" has a crop coefficient of 0.8 (Which is cool season grasses) Most people in Southern states in the US do not use such grasses. Could there be a way to add selections of grass types in Zone settings/vegetation type? I am not asking for all differing species, but a generalized selection? I understand that we can use custom, but for those that do not understand Allowed depletion, Root Depth, Permanent Wilting point, and Crop Coefficient it can get confusing for them and allowing them to set their grass type would be useful.
Seasonal adjustments are automatically done based on ET because ET is much lower at winter and much higher in summer.
Then this question then comes up. What are the months you have programmed into the machine to use as winter months or is it being determined based off the rolling average over 10 or 20 years, basing again off of the LAT/LONG in the system when setting up? Some years we have mild winters, as we are now...other times we have bad ones. WE had ice a few years back with temps in the teens to twenties (F not C) at Halloween.
However You have the possibility to use monthly coefficients by setting "custom" as vegetation type and setting "multiple monthly values" at the crop coefficient. We recommend this type of setup for agricultural crops (which are growing and have very different plant coefficient from one month to another).
SO I could effectively use this for my lawn, per say. I could input the data that I use above (my general rule of thumb) for my grass coefficient depending on the season.
April - September = 0.60
March and October = 0.30
November - February = 0.10
We plan to release a new feature which will permit "adaptive frequency" exactly for deeper roots promotion - this will irrigate with different frequency in summer and winter. The feature is right now in alpha release, probably soon we will release it in beta for customer testing.
This is something I would be interested in testing out. Here were I am at the water restrictions are not as severe as some. I do however try to promote deep root growth for my lawn. I was going to actually post something in the suggestion area regarding this. I think that deeper root growth should be promoted for lawns, which in turn would use less water overall. I understand that not everyone is interested in such things and that the initial phase of this could make lawns look like crap, but over the long haul it does reduce the water footprint that people would use. Thus saving them more money overall on their water bill. By doing what I have over the last several years I have cut my watering bill down over 2/3rd, even with teens in the house....lol.
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I am still lost as to why the RM wants to water my lawn daily for the time it indicates per zone, when my lawn does not need that. Will this new feature allow those of us who have put our lawns into enough of a stress state to cause deeper root growth/penetration over time, not requiring daily waterings be able to get data that will reflect as such?
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We are considering adding more plant types, seems the grass types are the most requested ones - might appear in the next release.
Seasonal adjustments are made based on a rolling 30 day average for the last 10-20 years (depending from how much data we have for the stations).
I could input the data that I use above
Yes You can do that if You feel, but don't don't forget the rainmachine will irrigate already with the % from ET.
If You check Your seasonal adjustment graph You can see that ET max what we take as 100% is for ~0.23 inch (july). In march when there is ~0.1 inch the irrigation will be anyway ~45% of the time You set. So the reduction with grass coefficient 0.30 vs 0.60 will also add to this reduction and in march will irrigate 50% of the 45% :)This is something I would be interested in testing out
Alpha release is internal one, beta is selectable from the UI at the settings - it will be on by the end of the year probably.
I am still lost as to why the RM wants to water
The recommended time is calculated based on ET max, in your case ~0.23 inch. That is multiplied with the plant coefficient 0.8 will give ~0.18 inch.
To irrigate that amount of water for a square feet with the PR (precipitation rate) takes N seconds. That N is the recommended time for a day - if it is too high, either Your PR is too low, either the plant coefficient is too high. Another rare issue can be a microclimate factor - in rare cases even if the 20 year average based on NOAA data is ~0.23 inch for that area, Your location is a wind safe, sun safe location having a much smaller ET for July could cause this discrepancy. This is something what we really can't "guess", it depends from the user to tune the recommended time (lowering it).As You can see the base math for the recommended time N is not complicated, what is complicated is the rest of the math which implies frequency, forecasts, cycles (to not overrun), rains etc. That changes the frequency, modulates N but N will still remain N for a hot day so the recommended time will not change with the new version either. Just the frequency might (spreading the same amount of water in different pattern to allow deeper roots).
This is how EPA Watersense calculates the water need for a day, we can't change that otherwise we would not pass their tests.
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