Soak times with fixed schedules?

How can I tell if the smart cycle option is working with fixed schedules? With a flex schedule I was able to see soak times when I selected the next watering day. With the fixed schedule, it just shows each station running for the fully scheduled time. Are the soak times hidden, or am I misunderstanding how smart cycles are supposed to work?

@cwiedmann, good evening. Smart Cycle is dependent on the zone attributes and duration of the watering time. Are you running shorter durations on the Fixed schedule? If so, the duration might not be long enough to trigger Smart Cycle to enable.

For more details, please refer to this support article.

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No, I’m running similar durations and am not seeing the cycles. I’ve set some of my zones up so that it should only water 4 minutes, per cycle (that’s what the flex schedule did), but it’s still doing a 9 minute cycle when I look in the watering schedule.

I’ve set all my zones to steep with clay soil to try to trigger smart cycles, but am still not seeing them on my fixed schedules.

Edit: to get the 4 minute time I also created a 3 in/hr custom nozzle.

@cwiedmann, you’ll need to create a new watering schedule to reflect these changes in your schedules. Fixed schedules took a snapshot of your zone attributes at the time the schedule was created and are static thereafter. The new 2.5 schedule framework corrects this moving forward.

I’d recommend using the +/- buttons on the new 2.5 schedule creator to edit your watering durations if you do not know the precipitation rate of your zone.

After reviewing your account, the reason your schedule is not Smart Cycling is because you added all zones to the schedule, including a drip zone. As noted in the Smart Cycle support article, if there are any bubbler, emitter, or mister nozzles in the watering time, we DO NOT Smart Cycle.

Moving forward, to correct the issue, I’d recommend you remove the zone 9 Plants outside Kitchen fence (bedding plants) from your schedule :slight_smile:

Hope this helps.

Best, Emil

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Ah ok, that’s pretty subtle. I missed that when I read the article. Thanks for the pointer. Out of curiosity, why is there this restriction? It seems to me the sprinklers could still soak even if the bubbler didn’t.

I do plan to tune my precipitation rates by measuring with catch cups. My problem is that I get runoff on some of my zones with pretty low durations, which is why I added the custom nozzle. With the standard nozzle, it would water 8 minutes even set to clay and steep, which in my yard seems to result in a lot of runoff.

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@cwiedmann, great question. Most drip zones are either watering flowers with short run times to begin with, or shrubs/trees which require deep root watering.

I’d recommend creating watering times based on each hydrozone (zones that share the majority of the same zone attributes).

You might want to check out rotary nozzles; they have a low precip rate, which will apply the water slower so the ground can absorb it better.

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Thanks, that’s helpful. I will look into replacing the sprinkler heads. Unfortunately whoever designed the irrigation apparently did some funky things. There are different brands of sprinklers and even a zone with both sprinklers and drip irrigation on it. I suspect eventually there will be some more serious reworking needed to get the system working efficiently.

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@emil although I haven’t started using the watering schedule yet, I did have a flex schedule set up before the 2.5 update that included 4 turf zones and 1 drip zone. The watering for the turf zones was broken up to allow for soak time, even though the drip zone was on the schedule.

It showed 6 minutes per zone repeating 7 times, and then a 59 minute run of the drip zone. Now with the new update, I have to create a different schedule for the drip zone instead of being able to combine them. Was it a fluke that I was able to do it before?

Now that you mention it, that’s exactly what I saw. That’s why I was confused when the fixed schedule didn’t have soak times. I suspect the reason for this is that the flex schedule handles each zone as if it were on a separate schedule, so it doesn’t have the same restriction.

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