Suggested Watering Duration
My zone properties:
1500 sqft
Rotors
Clay Loam
Full Sun
Slight slope
Warm Season Grass
Recommended watering time: 139mim 28sec
Is this time affected by the frequency to which the program is set to run? I would think this suggestion is quite exaggerated. I’d prefer to use these sort of functions of the controller, but just want try and get a better understanding of how it works.
Thanks for any help you can provide.
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In the zone properties suggested time is daily. In the program properties the time will indeed be multiplied by frequency (eg: x2 if it's every 2 days).
The time is that big because of the rotors which our default model is the low precipitation rate one. I would suggest changing it to Custom and increase your precipitation rate, either from the manufacturer datasheet or after doing a catch cup test.
In general we've seen that most current rotors have much better precipitation than our default one. Usually increasing precipitation rate by a factor of 2 seems to match newer high efficiency rotor models.
In the current beta we added a higher efficiency rotor model because of this.
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Nicholas, thank you for the response! This makes sense. I'm still new to lawn irrigation and am learning. I have increased my PR on my rotor zones to 0.5, as I have the I-20's from Hunter, and after reviewing their specs sheet, it looks like I they're PR is right around 0.45 to 0.5. Couple of follow up questions:
- Hypothetically, if my suggested watering time per day is 20 min, do you suggest watering every day for 20 min, or every other day for 40 min? Or is there no difference.
- Can you recommend a tutorial for performing the cup test and/or a place to purchase the accessories to perform the test?
Thanks again for your response, you guys provide great support.
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I'm a fan of daily programs with adaptive frequency. Also it might pay off to watch the soil after a heavy rain and after how many days RainMachine starts to water again. If the soil still looks wet and RainMachine starts I would increase the "Field Capacity" from the zone properties. I kept adding soil layers to my garden and none of the types from RainMachine really worked for me.
As for videos:
Simple one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gShoVigPL0E
With more details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UU5X2sTMpI
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