RainBird migration: custom Sprinkler Head Type
Older house came with several irrigation zones, each having multiple sprinkler types, slopes and shade. I initially decided to simply duplicate (Sun, Wed, Fri) programming from the RainBird ESP-6 being replaced into a Mini-8 (using custom times). A yard maintenance crew comes Monday mornings; restrictions for Monday and later Sunday help make grass as dry as possible for mowing.
July was so wet here that the Mini-8 program never ran, but relatively dry heat this week provoked the Mini-8 to schedule about 180% for this Wednesday.
That provoked me to replace custom times on 3 fixed days with times every 2 days to cause Tuesday watering. Rather than reduce custom times by 1/7, I instead calculated daily times, then used custom Sprinkler Head Type in web-ui Zone edit and tweaked Precipitation Rate until (at least, with firmware 4.0.954) "Suggested daily summer watering time" matches previously calculated daily times and use Suggested times in the program. I also set Area under "Zone Flow Rate Reporting", to help estimate approximate water usage. This all supposes that ESP-6 programming had been roughly correct...
With appropriate suggested daily watering times, would changing program frequency to "Every Day" be appropriate, since "Use Adaptive Frequency" is also enabled? I'm not sure how "every 2 days" works, when Monday is restricted...
I did not see where the iOS app would show "Suggested daily summer watering time" on the screen for setting custom sprinkler head Precipitation Rate, which is unfortunate..
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Hi Steven,
You can change the program frequency to "Every Day". Note that by doing this, the suggested time will be halved.
By using adaptive frequency, RainMachine will water when watering needs are at least at 50% and rolling over to the next watering date when lower.
We will consider re-showing "Suggested daily summer watering time" in zone advanced screen.
Theodore
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Hi Theodore,
Thanks for the response. I set program frequency to "Every Day", but that scheduled my Trees and Bushes zone for all the same days as Grass zones. I was hoping that a zone for Trees and Bushes would automatically adaptively schedule less frequent watering than for Grass. Since that did not happen, I created a separate every 3 days program for that zone.
A 00:00 - 11:00 hourly restriction is set for Monday morning yard maintenance, but the dashboard and PROGRAM SIMULATION LOG show programs scheduled Monday. From experience, I expect those will will be cancelled, but wish the scheduling algorithm accounted for hourly restrictions.
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Hi Steven,
When you are using adaptive frequency and have configured two or more zones with different vegetation types, the program is still scheduled to run for all zones but it will not water those zones that don't fulfil the watering needs (at least 50%).
I suspect that the watering needs for both zones in your case exceeded 50%. Creating a separate program for trees and bushes with different frequency is a good solution.
Theodore
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