What is ET?
Evapotranspiration (ET) is the amount of moisture that evaporates from the soil and transpires from plants. Plant transpiration is the movement of moisture from the plant to the air through the tiny pores in the plant leaves. The ET value is the amount of water required to keep the plant healthy for that day. This water replaces the amounts lost due to evaporation and transpiration.
ET is affected by temperature, humidity, wind, and sunlight. The following chart displays the typical ET values over a 12-month period and is expressed as percent of summer run-time minutes.
Aqua Conserve Controllers
The Aqua Conserve controller contains the historical ET information for different regions of the United States within its memory. During the installation of the controller you enter your region into the controller.
When there is no temperature sensor connected, the controller adjusts the amount of water based on the historical information. Using the above chart as a guide, if you had entered 10 minutes as your summer run-time and it is the first week of February the controller will run for 1 minute. (10 minutes times 10%)
The controller is designed to use a temperature sensor, which is included with all Aqua Conserve controllers. When the temperature sensor is connected to the controller and properly installed, the controller will modify the daily run-times based on both historical information and your actual local temperature. As the temperature increases, the controller will add more water. As the temperature decreases, the controller will reduce the amount of water applied.
As a safety precaution the controller will not add more then 30% or less then 50%, above or below what the historical watering times would have been, respectively. This will protect your landscape incase the temperature sensor is installed incorrectly or the temperature sensor fails to operate properly.
All of the controller calculations are based on the summer run-times you programmed into the controller. The controller assumes that the run-times are for the summer months and uses that information to calculate the actual daily run-times.
Accumulation Feature
The Aqua Conserve controller has an accumulation feature designed to prevent shallow watering of the landscape, when there are days of low ET values. This feature is especially important if you have impact rotors installed in your landscape. During days with low ET values, the controller's calculated run-times could be a fraction of the summer run-time minutes. With a short run-time, the irrigation system only applies a small amount of water to the landscape, which results in the development of a shallow root system.
When the accumulation feature, on the controller, is enabled, the controller will save the small run-times and add them together. Once it has accumulated adequate run-times to reach 50% of the summer run-time minutes, the controller will then turn on the sprinklers for the accumulated number of minutes. During the accumulation process, the controller will skip watering days. Using the above example, where the calculated run-time was 10% of the summer minutes, the controller would skip 4 days before irrigating on the 5th watering day, when it had accumulated 50% of the summer run-time minutes.
Cycle and Soak
The Aqua Conserve controller has an individual station feature called Cycle and Soak. The Cycle and Soak feature is used to prevent run off when irrigating on slopes or on soils, with low porosity.
When you program a Cycle and Soak function you program the maximum run-time before run-off occurs or the Cycle time and a minimum Soak time that allows the water to be absorbed by the soil. When an irrigation cycle starts, the station programmed with cycle and soak will alternatively run a cycle time or sprinkler on and a soak time or sprinkler off, until the total irrigation run-time is used. During the soak or off time, the controller continues to the next station and allows that station to irrigate.
Establishment Feature
The Aqua Conserve controllers have an establishment feature to help establish new plantings.
To establish a new planting, stations used to irrigate the new planting area can be programmed as a standard non-ET controller. The Aqua Conserve controller has two non-ET schedules that can be used for establishment. Once the establishment feature is activated you will program the controller to automatically revert back to ET based irrigation with a user-defined time of 0-60 days.
Conclusions
The Aqua Conserve controllers automatically adjust the amount of water delivered to your landscape based on historical ET data and local temperatures.
The controller set-up is simple, you enter summer run-time minutes per station, enter days of the week to run, and enter your region.
For more advanced or difficult landscape situations, the Aqua Conserve controller offer special features such as Accumulation, Cycle and Soak, and Establishment.
For more information, please contact us at 877 922 2782 or e-mail us at info@aquaconserve.com
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