Programming questions - Suggested Watering Times
I just got my Rainmachine a couple weeks ago and absolutely love it.....what an amazing product!
I am writing because I am noticing that my system is barely running, even though we had little rain this week and temps in the upper 90s. I have always rain my system 3 days a week X 40 minutes per zone. When I setup my rainmachine it was suggesting a 2 hours+ per zone, so I adjusted this down to 35% to get close to where I was.
I do have area and GPM setup, but I am using the default rotor PR of .35. I know changing this to .5 will make a difference, but the suggested time is still going to be much higher than I am used to. I looked up my rainbird rotors and the PR rate is listing .37-.72, so this is not very helpful.
That said, I notice that the system is only running 25-50% most days, so should I just use the suggested time and not worry about it?
Thanks!
-Mark
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Hi Mark,
Welcome to community ! Usually for customers that upgrade from a controller already setup we advise them to just put the previous duration that they used per zone as custom duration in program zones. This is the easiest way and have the same benefits and algorithm as the duration computed from zone properties. Of course this might be needing further tuning (+/- %) as it's hard to know how the previous duration was computed.
The duration of the zone calculated from it's properties depend on Sprinkler Head, Vegetation type and Sun exposure. For example only changing from Cool Season Grass to Warm Season Grass will reduce the watering duration by almost 30%. Same for Sun Exposure, how many hours per daylight it gets direct sunlight.
Most people (me included) don't have enough knowledge or patience to perfectly setup system by changing monthly plants coefficients for periods of stagnation/growth etc, just try to match as closely as possible their zone settings from the 4 options and then tune by observing plants with +/-. Usually it's - (decreasing) as RainMachine has default values that encourage plant growth not just survival.
As for the high temperatures, these matter less if difference between min and max for that day is small. This difference is very important in EvapoTranspiration numbers (you can actually see more watering in cooler days on which this difference is bigger).
I would let it as you set it up (down to 35%) and maybe try to reduce this 35% from zone settings if possible. Also worth noting that suggested duration in zone properties is for a daily run (7 days/week) during summer. In a program this gets multiplied by the days that you don't water.
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