Extreme Hot weather additional watering

post by liorreem on Oct 11, 2018

Hi

Is it possible to add watering or prolong the watering duration in extreme hot weather incidents (for example > 105F)?

I’m not talking about seasonal shift by isolated cases of extreme hot weather which last for a few days.

Thanks!

Lior

post by franz on Oct 11, 2018

@liorreem Curious what type of schedule(s) are you using?

post by liorreem on Oct 15, 2018

I started with flex monthly, but since it resulted in 3 day interval, which seems too long for our hot weather, I switched to fixed, with 2 days interval.

My Gardner recommended 1 day intervals…

post by tmcgahey on Oct 15, 2018

How do you have your zones set up (soil, sun, etc…)?

Once we get to hot weather, my Flex daily will usually fire every two days, which was more than adequate for my grass…

post by liorreem on Oct 15, 2018

well, I got 4 zones, every zone is different, some more sunny than others, one is grass, one is bushes, one is trees…

but how do you know it changes at hot weather?

I didn’t see such subject in the “weather intelligence”.

post by tmcgahey on Oct 15, 2018

Well, I use Flex Daily, so it is an ever evolving schedule. As it warms up it will tighten the intervals based on the estimated moisture in the soil. I’ve never played with Flex Monthly schedules, so I can’t speak with a ton of knowledge, but it uses historical data to set watering, so I suppose that an unseasonably hot month could throw things off. If you are up for the task, maybe you should look into Flex Daily?

post by liorreem on Oct 15, 2018

I tried the flex daily and it gave crazy results. Some zones are set for 8 hours of watering. Some a few minutes. The intervals were random and long as well.

I gave up.

post by tmcgahey on Oct 15, 2018

Intervals adjust fluidly with Flex Daily, which is the best part about it. It takes some work to make sure that you have the zone set up correctly, but it waters the way you should water, longer durations, less frequently. Not sure what zone you had set up that were running 8 hours, but if you have grass zones with a high precipitation rate, and have cycle soak turned on, the run time will include 30+ minutes of soak for each zone, but actual watering time will be much less.