Manual run times

[langenet]

When I set the manual runtimes to a value, the actual runtime is far less in duration.
For example
one zone (Front Lawn Street) is manually set to run for 35 minutes, in my HS log, I see that the valve is turned on at 7:50 pm but turns off at 8:03 pm. Same deal with other zones.

03/08/2012 7:50:01 PM mcsSprinklers Rain8 Unit 1, Valve 3 $3: Front Lawn Street ON
03/08/2012 8:03:49 PM mcsSprinklers Rain8 Unit 1, Valve 3 $3: Front Lawn Street OFF


These times are set in the zone or touch zone pages...

Why such a descrepency?

Rob

[Uncle Michael]

These times are set in the zone or touch zone pages...Why such a descrepency?

What are they in the Zone Setup page? That may be overriding, if you are setting it somewhere else.

[langenet]

I checked the zone setup page. 35 minutes is set there as well....
If I adjust the touchzone page, I can review the zone setup page to see the same thing set. Speaking of the touchzone page, I can't back arrow to the main mcssprinker page. I seemed to need to go to my main stat page, then into mcssprinker. Additionally, the touchzone reports the temp wrong as well - that is it reports 78 deg C which is impossible. We in Canada are metric, but I think the plugin gets confused...

[Michael McSharry]

Look at the run log to see if any external influence is at play. For more specific answers the general debug would be needed so the internal scheduling parameters can be viewed. If you provide the debug, then give some hints as to when the unexpected situation occurs.

The sensor values shown on the Touch Zone page are obtained from the HS Device Value of the specific sensor. Are you indicating that the value in HS is a good centigrade value, but the value on the touchzone page looks like a farenheit one. If you give me some specific observations for HS DeviceValue, mcsSprinklers General Status and mcsSprinkelrs TouchZone then it will be easier to identify the source of the disconnect.

[langenet]

Well it appears a WU station was reporting in Farenheit instead of celcius. Which explains the value provided. BTW, why is the solar sensor (from UV) and the temp sensor the same value?
Addditionally, if I wanted to shorten the times before watering, should I adjust the Min moisture setting higher in the area page, i.e 50% or what? I think my ET is now correct as it is .13, though my lawn still seems dry...

Rob

[Pete]

Last year I tried the 1-wire temperature sensor in a sealed jar thing in direct sunlight. It worked but it wasn't sealed well enough.

The red ?? is an indication of an out of range value on the high side. The solar DC, as implemented, is the in-the-sun temperature and Temp DC is the in-the-shade temperature. Values of above 150 or so will show as the red ??.

The objective of Solar DC and UV is to try to estimate the solar radiation for the ET calculation. If a Solar DC is entered then this value will be used. If it is not entered then the Solar DC value is estimated as

SolarValue = UV * UV / 2 + Temperature

http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=105764

I'm irrigating based upon the Calculated ET control strategy, but the the lawn becomes too dry between each irrigation cycle. How can I prevent this?

There are several parameters that are involved in determining the irrigation interval. The most significant is the ET calculation which depends primarily upon the solar radiation. For most users this radiation is estimated based upon the UV index obtained from the internet. If the daily ET reading, as shown on the General Status page at the end of a sunny day consistently shows a low reading vs. historical or other ET sources then the Solar Factor on the Other setup page can be increased. Nominally it is 1.0. A value of 1.1 will increase the the ET by approximately 10%. If the adjustment is more than 1.5 then there is reason to believe the internet data reporting for the selected zip code is not reliable. This can be observed by looking at the calendar for the UV sensor and observe the hourly report being seen by mcsSprinklers.

If the ET reading appears reasonable, then the ET minimum threshold on the Area setup should be increased. If it started at 0% and is changed to 50% then the irrigation cycle will occur twice as often.

If the problem of insufficient water is not site-wide, but only exists for a specific zone then the choice is to change the crop factor to reflect a higher moisture loss-rate or to increase the duration of the water cycle for this zone. If the duration is increased, then care needs to be exercised to only increase it to the point where the soil can hold the moisture. Any amount beyond this will be lost and not help the lawn from becoming overly dry.

http://mcssprinklers.com/faqFAQ.htm

Are you getting your WU data from a personal weather station or the general WU weather reporting station numbers for your area?

I utilize the UV number from Weatherunderground general weather (not personal WUN stations and today AWS as a backup to that.)

[Michael McSharry]

BTW, why is the solar sensor (from UV) and the temp sensor the same value?

solar sensor is the in-jar temperature sensor. When there is no sunlight then the in-jar and in-shade temperature sensors will be the same.

Addditionally, if I wanted to shorten the times before watering, should I adjust the Min moisture setting higher in the area page, i.e 50% or what? I think my ET is now correct as it is .13, though my lawn still seems dry...

A 50% threshold should result in 50% in a cycle that occurs when 50% of previoulsy appplied water has been lost. A 75% threshold will result in a cycle when 25% of the previoulsy applied water has been lost. The assumed situation is that the run time specifed for a zone will result in 1 inch of soil moisture and if a threshold of 0% is used then irrigation will occur when there is no moisture left in the soil down to 1 inch depth.

You should find an appropriate run time and moisture threshold for your situation. Think of them as two dials without labels. Just like your audio amplified may have a scale marked on its know and your turn it until the volume is to the desired leveled, your mcsSprinklers dials should be used until your get an irrigation shedule that works for your situation. If you use something that is close to the nominal 1" run time then the effects of weather changes should be automatically considered.

[langenet]

Thanks Pete and Mike... I've been toying with WU and Accuweather as my source. I can't see on the Other page where to adjust my ET calculation from 1.0 as my ET seems far less than Historical. My solar is always the same as well as the temp.

Rob

[Michael McSharry]

Your weather setup page is where you start. Select your method by which ET is determined. I believe your options are ET sensor, ET from Solar Radiation or ET from Solar. You will likley want from Solar. Then you need to select how you want to compute Solar. One option is from in-sun temperature sensor or from UV. You likely want to select from UV. The source of the UV sensor then needs to be selected. The WU forecast site is the place I suggest.

Solar radiation sensor is sometimes available from a local WU site, but I have found them to not be very dependable, but this can be used as the primary source of sunlight if you choose ET from Solar Radiation.

I believe ET sensor is only available from personal weather stations such as Davis or Weatherhawk.

I would not suggest changing the master solar intensity setting which is nominally at 1.0. If you are having signficant issues then a change in the master setting will not resolve the issue.

You indicated that your station is reporting in F and plugin is treating is as C. If you give me your station ID I can look into it to see where the disconnect is. I believe I tend to follow the user settings on use of metric temp/rain/wind to know how to interpret the weater data.

[langenet]

I don't have compute ET from Solar. Additionally, for some reason there are stations reporting in F and not C. So I use Accuweather which reports in C.

[Pete]

Robert,

I don't see UV or Radiation with your weather sites. I utilize UV from WeatherUnderground. I did a quick check on the WUN weather stuff for your location and see UV is there.

I also did a quick check of accuweather and see an UV index there. That said your "check weather" should show a UV number for Accuweather and it doesn't.

I don't believe you need the API key to get the WUN weather with Michaels program but I am not sure and put it there anyways.

The numbers though that you see in the "weather check of internet sites" will show up in the variables.

I was using the UV numbers from NOAA and I thought that they were "guesstimated" UV numbers rather than actual numbers. I'm not totally sure on the WUN UV numbers but I think they might be real time? Looks like you are getting your UV from a WUN personal station; but there is no UV there. Does it change if you make WUN your primary weather source?

http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/...530,-75.697193

[langenet]

Thanks again Pete. This is very helpful.
I added CYOW,CANADA (which is our international airport) to the alternate site and placed in the license key which I obtained and found it showed the exact same info as the Accuweather site - it just took longer to obtain. Again, I don't see any UV information there. I do however see it in the link and houly weather forcast as also provided by your link. Is the CYOW, CANADA only valid in the alternate site? How is your primary specified?

Rob

[langenet]

Ah ha... for some reason today (not sure if it's case or space sensitive) I entered the same information in the alternate station and now see a UV index and now my Solar and Temp values are different. When I did an "Evaluate Internet Download..." it did show CYOW, CANADA but there was no UV displayed yesterday afternoon .... hmmm. Anyway, I think I'm in way better shape now.

Thanks again for all your help!

Rob

[Pete]

How is your primary specified?

Not sure to be honest. I am guessing the primary source is based on my zip code and latitude and longitude and evaluation? I see the numbers then from the WU site as above so I am guessing that is the primary?

Just know what the Optional Alternate Weather sources and Optional Alternate Forecast source is set up for.

I did switch from radiation to a close to real time UV for my ET stuff cuz I couldn't get good numbers on radiation based on individual weatherundergound personal stations. (BUT I also tried the 1-wire temperature sensor in the jar thing and I did come up with a kind of close UV number with a guesstimated on my light sensor values forumula for testing a while back).

I use my personal weather station for the temperature, humidity, rain, wind direction, wind speed stuff and the internet for the UV stuff to calculate ET today with mcsSprinklers.

[langenet]

I noticed that you have Solar set to None as apposed to calulated from UV as in my case. Isn't the later preferred??? Is there a particular reason you have it set this way?

Rob