Enhancing the freeze protection and variable order of valve opening
I live in Florida where we can have four seasons in one day. It can be 30 degrees at night (rarely) and go up to 60 or 70 in the day. When the freeze restriction goes on, we need the option to allow the rainmachine to water during the day, but go off at night and start when the weather warms up. Now I have to manually turn it off to water and restore the restriction at night. I am old and forgetful so sometimes this does not happen.
Also, I would like to be able to change the order of when watering is done. In other words, although it now follows the valve order (1,2,3, 4...) I would like the option to mix these (for a variety of reasons (again related to the changing temperature in Florida) so that I could, if I wanted, run valve 2,4,1,3... or whatever. When I built my valves, I did not think to do it in any order, so I do not know why I must be restricted by the rainmachine! It is software after all and can be programmed.
Thank you
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>Also, I would like to be able to change the order of when watering is done. In other words, although it now follows the valve order (1,2,3, 4...) I would like the option to mix these (for >a variety of reasons (again related to the changing temperature in Florida) so that I could, if I wanted, run valve 2,4,1,3... or whatever. When I built my valves, I did not think to do it in >any order, so I do not know why I must be restricted by the rainmachine! It is software after all and can be programmed.
This feature is already implemented and is currently available as a beta update. Stable update will follow soon.
>I live in Florida where we can have four seasons in one day. It can be 30 degrees at night (rarely) and go up to 60 or 70 in the day. When the freeze restriction goes on, we need >the option to allow the rainmachine to water during the day, but go off at night and start when the weather warms up. Now I have to manually turn it off to water and restore the >restriction at night. I am old and forgetful so sometimes this does not happen.
Yes the current design completely shuts down the RainMachine for the day when minimum temperature is below the threshold. Usually when it's freezing temperatures you shouldn't have water in pipes (they have to be blown) so watering during day and closing in the night might not be the best approach.
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Maybe I should open another topic, but I'm going to tag on here....
I am in Texas and with the exception of extreme events that occur once in 5 years... my pipes are freeze protected just by being in the ground. I do not normally turn of the system and I never blow out the pipes. It's just not needed. I do like the idea of not watering when it's freezing... as that just is a waste and will cause a hazard with ice on the ground.
However, I am now expanding a little and I need some variation. In addition to what Robert suggests, I would like to see freeze protection on a zone-by-zone basis. The reason here is that I just put in a greenhouse and am about to build out some drip zones in the greenhouse. I would love to see an enhancement where, for example, zones 1-10 do not water when the temperature is below freezing but zones 11-12 water no matter what the temperature (because they will be fully contained in a temperature controlled environment.)
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