15 minute restriction

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Jon Waland

December 09, 2019 03:41

As of tomorrow my local water supply will be enforcing a restriction meaning a maximum of 15 minutes per zone per day.

https://www.sydneywater.com.au/SW/water-the-environment/what-we-re-doing/water-restrictions/level-2-water-restrictions/index.htm

"You can only use drip irrigation or smart watering systems for a maximum of 15 mins a day per watering zone, before 10 am and after 4 pm."

Any suggestions on how to enforce this?

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  Jon Waland December 09, 2019 03:58

  ok - added the daily 10am-4pm restriction, and within each program set a custom duration of 15 minutes. Also disabled "adaptive frequency" and Hot Day overwater.
  But I'm still getting zones that want over 100%....

  

   

  (121%=22 minutes...)

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  Jon Waland December 09, 2019 04:13

  for some reason hot day overwater wasn't sticking. Rebooted, forced weather update, and now no overwater.
  No convinced I'm doing this right though - My lawns will water for 45 seconds tomorrow....

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  Mark December 10, 2019 21:22

  Hi Jon,

  Im in sydney too with the same challenges. I changed most of my watering zone to daily as that gave me suggested watering times less than 15min. This still left me with your issue with the unticking "Hot Day" watering gave unpredictable results. I found that changing the "Maximum percentage" to 110% did work. So maybe try 110% or 101% and leave it enabled ?

   

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  Jon Waland December 11, 2019 03:19

  OK - I set hot  day to 110% max - and unsurprisingly I got some days (saturday/sunday/monday) with > 100%, and some (today/tomorrow etc) with less - suggesting that the 'average summer day' that is used for adding/removing watering time is likely to be about 26-28c depending on the type of soil etc, and thus the 15 minutes gets altered depending on the evaporation of the soil.

   

  I guess disabling weather-adaptive watering would remove this, but this means using fixed watering time, and ignores the whole 'its been raining" that I brought the rainmachine for in the first place.

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  Mark December 11, 2019 04:04

  Maybe someone else can let us know if it does, but I'm hoping as Rainmachine keeps track of the "Soil water surplus" for each zone it will calculate the 15min cycles are letting the zone fall below optimal levels and bump up later cycles as it gets to them.

  Not too confident though. That's why I have increased the watering frequency upto daily to get the times under 15min where I can. :)

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