New Mini-8 Total Watering Time Excessive?
I just received a Mini-8, set it up, updated the firmware, configured my zones, and left it run for a few days.
It is currently winter here so no watering is being done due to restrictions.
I am concerned that the watering is going to be far too much.
With my old timer, I watered each zone every other day for 20 minutes each. I thought that was excessive at times. The yard generally was in good health, looked green, got compliments.
With a 'Every 3 days' schedule, and the various 'automatic' option enabled on the Mini-8, the total watering time currently shows 7hrs 52min 48sec
My zones are described accurately. Shall I just wait for watering season to arrive and see what actually happens? Make some adjustment before hand?
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Hi Gary,
8 hours looks too much, you say total watering time so this means it's total time for 8 zones or less ? I see that is a program that runs "every 3 days" but I'd like to know more about your zone setup and sprinklers head used. The biggest increase in watering time is due to sprinkler head being configured with a lower precipitation rate than the real precipitation rate. Can you tell me the model of your sprinklers heads ?
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Hi Gary,
I looked at your sprinkler head specs and it can do more than our default rotary one: https://www.orbitonline.com/site_files/manuals/55469-24%20rA(1)1.pdf
To change our defaults go to zone properties and on the Sprinkler Head type select Custom and enter:
Precipitation Rate: 0.5in/h
Application Efficiency: 0.8
Let me know what timers you get.
To be more precise we would need:
1. Exact sprinkler type (red, blue, green),
2. Area of each zone in square ft,
3. number of sprinkers for each zone and their radius patterns (eg: 4 heads @ 180degrees, 1 @ 360 degrees etc)
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Hi Nicholas,
Those figures provide much better times. Once the snow is off the lawn, I shall get the exact measurements, head count and type, I also plan to do an Orbit cup measurement since I have the 12 cups anyway.
For now, the custom sprinkler has zone 1 down to 22min 5sec, about 1/6 the previous value.
Thanks for the quick and accurate help! Once I have all the data I'll update the device and this post. That will likely be in a month.
Gary
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