SPRINKLER TALK FORUM - You Got Questions, We've Got Answers

Just remember drip uses water at 1 gal per hour not 1 gal per min. If you want a good controller I use the Hunter Pro-C it has a lot of functions. You can get one at www.sprinklerwarehouse.com

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by SprinklerGuy</i>
<br />Best drip controller ever was manufactured by Batrow...

One station with pins..mechanical timer with a motor that never seemed to want to die....

14 day wheel......pins mean no water
Timing wheel....each pin equaled 15 minutes of water


I bet they still make it......if you are in Arizona it should be easy to find ....or check right here at Sprinkler Warehouse....

Good luck
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Best drip controller ever was manufactured by Batrow...

One station with pins..mechanical timer with a motor that never seemed to want to die....

14 day wheel......pins mean no water
Timing wheel....each pin equaled 15 minutes of water


I bet they still make it......if you are in Arizona it should be easy to find ....or check right here at Sprinkler Warehouse....

Good luck

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by h2pro</i>
<br />3 program timer with up to 4 start times per day will accomodate this. rainbird esp modular,hunter exc. this can be achieved by assigning 3 start times on that specific zone under all 3 programs (a,b,c)
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I was thinking something along these lines as well.

I've got a cheap controller (least expensive thing I could find at Lowes to use as a temporary controller... but as time goes buy, temporary seems to becoming a little more permanent). Anyway, even this cheap controller has a feature to run zones multiple times in a day.

You ask a good question. It starts from always having been taught to water long/deep vs. frequently/shallow. Growing up we had water turns every 8 days or so that lasted something like 14 hours. So everything got watered on that schedule, and I guess I'm taking the same principles even further.

Since you asked the question I've done a little research and it looks like I should be determining how long the water really needs to be on so that I'm watering enough, but not over-watering. This document: http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/water/az1298.pdf suggests using a "soil probe" to see how deep the water is getting for a given watering. It also suggests that I might want to have more drippers per plant than I currently have.

So I guess this all means that I need to do some homework before I can really say how long I need to run each zone.

Thanks for prodding me in the right direction,

+ Ponders:

why do you need to run it for 24 hours?

How would I make that work if I have three zones (valves)?

Thanks,

+ Ponders:

3 program timer with up to 4 start times per day will accomodate this. rainbird esp modular,hunter exc. this can be achieved by assigning 3 start times on that specific zone under all 3 programs (a,b,c)

I finally added an inexpensive controller to a drip system I've been piecing together as we've added shrubs and trees over the past few years. However, it's maximum run time per station is only four hours. I'd prefer to run each station longer. While I was running the stations manually it wasn't uncommon for me to let them run 24 or even more hours.

My question is: are there controllers that are designed for this kind of running time, and if so what's the best way to find and compare?

Thanks,

+ Ponders: