Overlapping Zones - Setup tips

I have a 3000 sqft backyard. It is made up of 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 set this up in Rachio?

Each zone has a 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 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

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 you mean. They are Hunter rotary heads that are a PGP with a 2.0 gpm nozzle in them. Zone 1 and 3 only travel the 180 degrees. You can’t set time on flex daily. All 3 zones water the 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

So if I am at .6 inch/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 1.2 inch/hr and leave 1 and 3 at the .6 inch/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. So you would want zone 2 to be its actual output, which in your case looks to be .6 inch/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 a while.

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. 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 set up the same (same soil type, slope and sun exposure). The only change made (from suggestions in this thread) was the gallons/hr rate of the heads. Leaving all the rates the same was giving too much water in the backyard (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 it dry and brown. How have you solved such issue?

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, and it’s hard to imagine the grass is dry when doing that. However, 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.