Overlapping Zones - Setup tips

post by gizbug on Aug 17, 2020

I have a 3000 sqft backyard. It is made up on 3 zones, 1,2,3.

Zone 2 is in the middle, and covers both zone 1 and 3.

My question is, what is the best way to setup this in rachio?

Each zone has rotary nozzle, that I measured out to be .6 gallons/hr

It makes sense to have zone 1 and 3 with this .6 gallons/hr setting, but what would be best practice for zone 2 (I don’t really want it over watering).

Tips?

post by gaustin on Aug 17, 2020

Are zones 1 and 3 half circle heads? If so, they should only need half as much time as the full circle heads in the middle.

post by gizbug on Aug 17, 2020

Not sure what u mean,

They are hunter rotary heads are a pgp with a 2.0 gpm nozzle in them.

Zone 1 and 3 only travel the 180degrees

You can’t set time on flex daily. All 3 zones water same amount of time

post by gaustin on Aug 17, 2020

Zones 1 and 3 are 180’s or half turn heads and I’m assuming the ones in the middle are 360 degrees or full turn heads. If all 3 zones are watering the same amount of time then zone 1 & 3 are receiving twice as much water.

post by gizbug on Aug 17, 2020

Correct. I don’t want that. I’m asking what the best approach is to correct this

post by gaustin on Aug 17, 2020

You could adjust the area settings in advanced setup but not sure if that will have an effect on watering time. In other words, the 180’s would cover half as much area.

post by Linn on Aug 17, 2020

Adjusting area settings is only used for calculating how much water you used. It has nothing to do with how much the system is going to water.

post by gizbug on Aug 17, 2020

I have zone 1 and 3 at 1000sqft and zone 2 at 3000sqft. Same times in all zones. That doesn’t fix the issue unfortunately

Still wasting water

post by gaustin on Aug 17, 2020

@Linn, can’t you specify max amount of time per zones somewhere? I remember doing something along these lines somewhere but I can’t remember where.

post by Linn on Aug 17, 2020

Not that I know of. Perhaps someone else knows.

post by gaustin on Aug 17, 2020

Maybe it was during the setup process.

post by gizbug on Aug 17, 2020

I cut the 2 backyards in half

post by Linn on Aug 17, 2020

I also had an overlapping area where I cut the watering time in half. But it would be much better to make the adjustment by changing the “nozzle Inches per hour” in the advanced settings than by changing the duration itself. That way if you need to make other changes to your zones they will pick up correctly. Changing just the duration overrides a lot of things, and may make you wonder why something isn’t working the way you thought it would down the row. When I did mine, they were set to 1 inch per hour, and I changed the two zones that almost identically overlap to 2 inches per hour. That had the same effect of cutting the watering time in half, and it’s probably what is happening with the overlap.

post by gizbug on Aug 17, 2020

@Linn
So if I am at .6inch/hr for zone 1,2,3, and zone 2 is in the middle (waters both 1 and 3 as in my picture attached) you would change zone 2, to 1.2inch/hr and leave 1 and 3 at the .6inch/hr?

post by Linn on Aug 17, 2020

I think I would start out by doing it the other way around. If I’m understanding this correctly, zone 2 waters pretty much everything (which begs the question, do you even need to use zones 1 and 3???). But zones 1 and 3 don’t water what part of zone 2 covers. So you would want zone 2 to be its actual output, which in your case looks to be .6inch/hr. Then I would change zones 1 and 3 to be 1.2 inch/hr, or perhaps even higher. You may just have to observe this for awhile.

Are you on a fixed schedule or flex daily?

post by gizbug on Aug 17, 2020

Daily

post by gizbug on Aug 17, 2020

I’ll try that. I emptied all 3 of the zones, set zone 2 to .6inch/hr , and zone 1 and 3 to 1.1 inch/hr, due to water tomorrow. see what happens. Right now zone 2 shows 1hr 16 min, and zone 1 and 3 at 15 min.

post by rraisley on Aug 17, 2020

Something’s wrong there. For your set Nozzle rates, zone 2 should be 1.1/.6 = 1.83x as long as zone 1 & 3. 1:16 and 0:15 is a difference of 5 to 1. Check other zone variables.

post by gizbug on Aug 17, 2020

You lost me

post by rraisley on Aug 17, 2020

If you’re letting Rachio calculate your watering time, it will use your Soil type (Available Water), Root Depth and Allowed Depletion to calculate how much water to apply. Those should be the same for all 3 zones. It will then use your Nozzle Inches/Hour and Efficiency to calculate the time required to apply that much water. If soil and crop (grass) are the same, and two zones have Nozzle Flows twice what the other zone has (2 are 1.2, 1 is 0.6), then the minutes of watering to accomplish this would be half the time in zones 1 and 3 than in zone 2. Your zone 2 is 5 times as long (1hr 16 min vs 15 min), not twice (or close to twice, using 1.1 instead of 1.2). So I’m concerned something is different somewhere not being mentioned.

post by gizbug on Aug 17, 2020

I deleted and recreated schedule. It looks correct now

post by Linn on Aug 17, 2020

Excellent. I agree that something must have been set different. Glad to hear that you fixed it.

If it still seems too wet, you may need to set the nozzle inches per hour even higher for zones 1 and 3.

post by Req56257 on Aug 23, 2020

I have the same setup in my backyard. I prefer to run all three zones on the same schedule to deep water the roots, rather than having a different zone water shallow every day. I would recommend against alternating water patterns in this type of area, as the roots will remain shallow and be less drought tolerant. Keep in mind that sprinkler systems are generally designed for overlapping coverage (head to head). To keep mine water patterns uniform, I set all three zones to the same soil type, slope, and sun exposure. Now, my system runs the entire area (all 3 zones), each time the lawn gets dry, and the roots get a deeper watering.

post by gizbug on Aug 23, 2020

My 3 zones are setup the same (same soil type, slope and sun exposure).

The only change made (from suggestions in this thread) was the gallon/hr rate of the heads. Leaving all the rates the same (as was the case when starting this thread) was giving too much water in the back yard (puddles, fungus growth) due to most areas receiving 3 times the amount of water needed.

post by jags on Aug 23, 2020

All,

I am in a similar situation as in gizbug. I have about 2700 sqft yard split into 3 different areas (not continuous like gizbug). There are two problems:

• I find that my water user usage is very high - about 2500 gallons. Do you find your numbers similar?
• I still find some areas of is dry and brown. How have you solved such issue?

Any help is appreciated.

Regards, Jags

post by rraisley on Aug 23, 2020

2500 gallons over 2700 square feet is about 1.49" of water. Over what period do you use the 2500 gallons? Sounds about right for a week to me, with hot weather.

post by jags on Aug 23, 2020

Thanks. This is not for a week. I water every other day and each time it is approximately 2500 gallons. For a week it will be close to 8000-10000 gallons. Most of it is for lawn and some of them are for other shrubs and trees. This is during the summer and hot weather. Seems like you use 1/4th of what I use for a week.

post by rraisley on Aug 23, 2020

I use about 9,000 gallons a week to put about 1.5" of water down in hot weather (somewhat less right now) for about 9,500 square feet total lawn area, and consider it about right. Using that much water on only 2700 square feet sounds way high to me (although I don’t know your weather), and it’s hard to imagine the grass is dry when doing that. Although small dry areas of a larger, wet area are not that unusual. You may need to add some heads or adjust things to even it out. But to me, your water usage is too high.

post by gizbug on Aug 23, 2020

I’m not sure I use that much (not sure where I would find that info).

Maybe if it seems way off, you may want to check your advanced settings in each zone, and delete/recreate your flex schedule?

post by jags on Aug 23, 2020

Richard, I use two controllers because I have 18 zones - couldn’t fit it in Rachio - 16 zones. I realized that my water usage is high, but it is not clear where. I also tried a leak detection company and there was no leak. It is just the sprinklers. Thanks for confirming that my usage is very high. I need to fix the sprinkler heads maybe. I live in Northern California - summers are 90 deg plus for about 3 months.

Gizbug, you can find this with your meter or I bought flume water (https://flumewater.com/) to measure my water usage at home. I was going to create flex schedule. Thanks for reminding that. I will do that let you know my progress. When I used to adjust the timing manually like half of what I am using now the lawn was a lot browner.

post by rraisley on Aug 23, 2020

Wow, someone did a quality job for your home: 2700 square feet with 18 zones. My 9,500 square feet has 6 zones. Should be a lot more, but it is what it is.

You’ve done well measuring your water usage and square feet. If I were you, I’d measure the water usage for each zone, and calculate as best you can the square feet for each zone. That should hopefully give you an idea where your high use areas are.