A good guide is to irrigate to the point when the water starts to run off OR you have got 1/2 inch of irrigation, whichever occurs first. You can determine the inches part by setting out some straight-sided cans or jars, running the system for 30 minutes and measuring the height of water in the jars with a ruler. The reading expresses, as inches of rain, how much irrigation has occured. If there is a significant difference in any of the containers, this would point up a "dry/wet" spot or malfunctioning head. When the system is running, it should look like a light rain.

deb, Are you willing to do the troubleshooting? Run the first zone manually by the controller. Does the zone run thru the full time without stopping? If it stops, how many minutes go by until it happens? Now run the zone manually by turning on the solenoid counterclockwise slightly until the zone 1 water comes on and run it for the full zone time. At the end of the run time turn the solenoid until the water stops, do not over tighten, just enough to shut the zone off. Does the unscheduled shut-off still happen? If all the other zones work fine and zone 1 works fine from the solenoid, there is probably a loose wire somewhere. Check the wire connection at the controller (redo do it). Then check the screw cap wire connections (hot and neutral) at the zone 1 auto-valve (should be in its valve box) (redo them with a waterproof screw cap). JMHO Aloha

I have a new Rainbird system. When first installed all the zones (6 total) worked fine. The contractor came out to install one power control switch that he didn't have before and now my last two zones won't come on like before. I got them to run by messing with the zone valves in the control box for their area. But now it's either 5 or 6 but not both at the proper time. Any ideas on how to make the proper setting for those valves? Or do you think I might have another problem? Any help appreciated!

I am redesigning my back and side yard to reduce the amount of lawn. Yesterday I measured my water pressure and flow out of one of my valves from an existing zone, here is what I found: Water Pressure is 70 PSI Water flow is 21 gallons per minute I am thinking of creating 3 zones, all using spray heads. Below are some pictures of these three zones: The flags indicate where I think the sprinkler heads should go. They are colored by zone, white, green and blue. The heads are spaced around 9.5 feet apart. The white zone has 14 heads, the green zone has 15 heads and the blue zone has 19 heads. You will notice the orange paint on the grass, that is where the new borders will be. A week from tomorrow I have a curbing company coming in to pour curbing. If you can't see the paint you may notice the grass is cut longer in the sections that will be flower beds, the exception being that huge clump of grass in the back yard that is just long because there is a pile of dirt there I need to level out. A future plan is that the green zone will have a gazebo in the middle which is why I chose to use spray instead of rotors for this zone. When this happens I will just move the sprinkler heads and switch to 180 nozzles for the 4 heads in the center where the gazebo will be. The system will use Rain Bird 1800 series heads with U8 series nozzles for most of the heads but I may use some of the VAN series for the smaller areas. The spec sheet can be found here: http://www.rainbird.com/documents/turf/chart_USeries.pdf http://www.rainbird.com/documents/turf/chart_VAN.pdf So I have a few questions: The nozzles have a 8 foot radius at 30 PSI, I am assuming at my higher pressure it will be greater or equal to my 9.5 foot spacing? The Rain Bird 1800 series have a PRS version that has a built in regulator to 45 PSI, will this be worth the extra cost? Thinking it might so I get a more consistent spray. Does my current design based on the pictures look like I will get plenty of coverage? Any help is appreciated, I want to start trenching early next week.