Max Days between Watering?

[degabe]

Hi Michael,

I have been meaning to bring this topic and with the recent discussion around Minimum Days between watering I figured the time was right.

Over the last winter while the Rain was OFF and ON. I found the need to manually water my potted plans and override the ET calculation. Some of the plants are exposed to rain and others are under cover in the patio. Both types are run on the same drip system. I though it might be good to have a Maximum Days Between Watering restriction to ensure that none of the plants completely dried out. Or maybe there might be another way of accomplishing this? What ideas do people have? At the other development extreme you could add a zone check box to indicate if the plants are protected, partially protected (mixed) or have no protection from rain. The the ET Zone calculations would need to take this in to consideration.

[Michael McSharry]

There is a max day's "restriction" that applies to all areas. When one starts thinking about using it it may be more appropriate to used fixed rather than variable time scheduling. Another thing that could be done is move the max-days setting from the Restriction page onto the Area page so it can be better tailored.

The most recent builds that have Rain8UPB logic changed code related to identification of zones. I know you have some special case zone you control independent of mcsSprinklers. I do not believe I broke the logic to allow you to do this, but before too much time passes it would be good if you could check to make certain the current builds still work for you.

[degabe]

Sorry for the late reply. Where is the max days between watering field. I couldn't find it? Must be right in front of me but I did not see it on the restirction page.

I will download the latest and give it a try.

[degabe]

Seems to function fine except that the HS status display for the Rain8 Net zones that are controlled only through HS shows "0 Minutes Left" when the unit has been turned on. Before it use to display "ON".

[Michael McSharry]

When I went and looked I see that I did not bring Max days out to the user interface. It was there in version 1.x and I cannot recall any reason for not including it now. I'll bring it out, but before I do this do you think it should be a global setting or an area-by-area one?

I'll also change the status display for the HS-only valves.

[degabe]

I think the Min/Max days between watering should be done on an area by area bases. This would give a much more powerful capability. You may want to provide both a global setting and be able to override on an area level. I realize this will not be as easy but might make for a good transition from today's version.

Good Stuff!

[Michael McSharry]

This has been incorporated in V2.6.278. I did a test with Max Days and Round Robin to proved the design is working. I did not try other combinations but I do not expect any problems.