In August of last year we had a landscape contractor install lawn, gravel path and in-ground irrigation. We now have
about 30,000 square feet of lawn. They used a Rainbird ESP_SMTe controller and
there are 17 active zones.

They programmed the controller for a grow-in period after
which it runs what I think is the same cycle every night from about 2:00 am to
6:00 am, running probably every zone.

There are some problem areas of lawn where I am overseeding
and I need extra cycles during the day. The owner of the company showed me how
to do this but it seems the controller is not doing what I want. Some zones have
a fair amount of slope and where my lawn meets the neighbor’s lawn there is too
much accumulation of water. I tried to use the new lawn zone setting and the
custom cycle/soak setting to limit the cycle time to 15 minutes (I assume cycle
time means run time) and to increase the soak time to 59 minutes. But today I
happened to look at the controller when it said it was soaking with one minute
to go. I waited until that expired then it said it was watering zone 13 and it
started counting down from 59 minutes!! Do I have my terms, cycle and soak
mixed up? I have downloaded both the regular and contractor’s manuals for this
system and I read through them but apparently am not understanding how to
program this controller.

I have watched pretty much all of the videos from Rainbird
and some others on youtube but they usually don’t cover the functions I am
using.