Joe Tucker set up our sprinklers and removed the blue wire ,too--best grass in the neighborhood

Jim Baumgartner is excellent 352-504-2317. I would call and get an expert opinion on what is best for you and your lawn.

I have the best lawn in my neighborhood since Jim has been taking care of my sprinkler system!!!

It's worth the low fee he charges. He is reasonable and honest!

OhioBuckeye
 

Glad the Villages put this subject out here for us to learn a little bit about our irrigation issues so we could see what kind of problems that are out there. As far as the company setting you control box & costing you money, well, that's not very good advertisement for them. My timings are all set on 20 mins. & I have 4 different ones. It would be interesting to see what they did to your control box to have you using more water. Water is expensive enough down here & they keep telling me fresh water is a sacred source of resource. Sorry, I really didn't answer your question exactly like you wanted, but glad you spoke up, thanks! :$::$:

OhioBuckeye
 

ALANMCDONALD, I forgot you can call the Hunter company & they'll walk you through it on the phone. (no charge) I've had a couple of issues & Hunter explains everything very easy to follow. They also told me to do something that I didn't really need, it saved me a little money & I did notice the less money on my utility bill. :$:

WAIT.................that's my yard.


Hmmmm

OhioBuckeye
 

Sorry Chatbrat, what about the blue wire, what does it do? I'm interested in anything I can learn about my irrigation system.

Changed all my settings to just 10 min. 4 or 5 am . Anything more just seems to be a waste. Les water more times a week and it is the same use. New plants should be done with your hose.

You may want to be mindful that if you don't have a water filter like a whole house filter that hose water has chlorine :mad:

?

The blue wire disables the seasonal adjustment. You set the percentage and it stays there. I just removed my Hunter and replaced it with a Rachio controller. It's controlled by wi-fi with your smart phone or computer. Links up to an official weather station or personnel one, and adjusts watering by past, present or future forecasts, or lets you decide manually. Sends me text alerts when ever it waters, the time and amounts. Also, you can run 1 zone at a time thru your phone to test your nozzles.
And, Pooh and Mike.........it works with Alexa!

your outdoor sensor does the similar thing, no?

No. If the forecast calls for rain after you water, your sensor will still water (waters at 3am, and rains at 6am, while Rachio won't water, and send you a notification. If the forecast is wrong, you can still water manually. It's capable of setting multiple schedules, with or without weather intelligence or other features, and you can use compatible rain sensors. A couple of nights ago, it notified me that it skipped a scheduled watering because of soil conditions, but I wanted to water anyway, so I just added a watering the next night. You can download a demo app for your smartphone and see how the app works.

I have zoysa grass and I want to lay down 1 1/2" and I do this only once a week. To determine how long to run the system to put down 1 1/2 inches, I placed several glass jars around the area and determined how many minutes are needed to give the lawn 1 1/2 inches. Mine came to 90 minutes. It's important that the water gets down to the roots of the grass, so I run my system in 2 passes. I allow the first pass to soak down to the roots rather than have run-off.

On channel A is run the timer for 45 minutes....I have several zones of grass so each zone will get the 45 minutes. Then I repeat the same amount of time on channel B.

For my landscaping and flower beds, I will run those zones a total of 30 minutes......15 minutes on channel A and 15 minutes on channel B.

And the cost?

return on that investment?

$199 on Amazon for the 8 zones, 16 zones will be higher. As far as return on investment goes, won't know until I get my next water bill, but at $199, I wasn't worrying about return on investment, it was purely a matter of convenience (or laziness, you choose), but I think I'm going to see less usage. I also like the remote feature so I can adjust the heads without running back and forth to the garage, and when I had a new sensor installed a few months ago, it was going to be around $130 to install a remote, so for an extra $70, I got the remote that not only works by smart phone, I can actuate it by voice with Amazon Echo. So, I when I think about it, I guess I'm happy with my return on investment, but I'm not saying it's for everyone. You probably have to be some what computer literate to use it. By the way, I bought your filter and love it, but I bought it 'cause I wanted it, and thought it would work, but never considered the investment factor.

Can you turn on a zone remotely to get someone out of your yard???

:loco: