Software for mapping out zones?

post by scorp508 on May 8, 2017

What Windows based software are some of you using to map out your irrigation zones? Unfortunately both Google and Bing have bird’s eye views of our home during spring/summer when the foliage is full and covers much of our yard from overhead, but I’d still like to do some basic drawings. I was looking for something with layer ability so I can have the overhead image as a background and then be able to toggle zone layouts off/on as I edit them. I’m tempted to do it in Visio, but thought there may be better ideas.

I walked the yard yesterday mapping out the general location and arc of each head, adjusted a few that were spraying into nowhere, and realized we have way more zone overlap than I realized. I suspect a good number of our zones will be getting far more water than Rachio realizes until I can do some cup analysis.

post by scorp508 on May 8, 2017

A few minutes in Visio resulted in this. Zone borders and their overlap aren’t perfect since I used rectangles instead of custom polygon for now. I also need to add the arc and rough radius of each nozzle. The “do not disturb” is a nozzle I need to repair on zone 2.

post by tomlay on May 8, 2017

Don’t know how practical it is for mapping out zones, but I have used this site gpsvisualizer.com for creating some boundary mapping of my house.

post by hgugger on May 9, 2017

While intended for remodeling projects, I bought myself this Bluetooth enabled laser distance measurement tool:

The handy part is that you can directly annotate pictures on your iPhone with the measured dimensions. It comes with reflectors for the long distances. Still have to go and actually do it, that’s why I don’t have an outdoor illustration yet…

post by MarkSanDiego on May 9, 2017

Save yourself a lot of time and money. Pull up your property on Google Maps, and use the distance tool that is included with these maps to take your measurements for each area.

You should be able to do this without stepping out on the property and walking it.

Further you don’t necessarily have to divide a single type of plant (grass vs tree vs shrub) into multiple zones just because they are in different areas of your property.

The main thing is to divide your property up by the type of plant which determines its watering needs. You might be able to run 2 or 3 separated areas of shrubs on the same “zone” or valve, despite their being in different areas.

The general rule is to determine the main types of watering needs (trees, shrubs, grass), and then calculate the flow rates needed to cover these 3 types of plants, which in turn will be dependent upon what precipitation rate spray heads or drip tubing you select. If you use low precipitation rate emitters and spray heads, you can cover a much larger area of plants with fewer “zones” or valves.

post by scorp508 on May 9, 2017

Wow Mark, thanks for the detailed response.
I just want to be clear that what you see above is a pre-existing system we inherited when purchasing the property. All of the colored dots are Hunter I-20 plastic rotors. Z4/Z5 get sun part of the day as the sun comes up over the top, but not as much as the other areas. I was considering doing some time lapse videos to get a rough estimate of how many hours per day each zone gets, though as we get closer to summer the Sun will be a bit higher off the horizon.

post by Arik on Apr 3

YardPro.com is the perfect tool for this. You can use it on your desktop or mobile device and it provides GPS mapping as well as task management and even has Rachio integration so you can run zones right from the map.