New to Irrigation

[dan2bhm]

I hope I'm not being redundant with other posts (didn't find an irrigation for complete morons anywhere).

 

I'm in the VA area and we've had an extremely dry season, grass is dying, looks terrible...blah blah blah.

 

I've got ISY and too-many-to-count various controllers throughout the house. I'm looking at getting an irrigation system installed for at least the front yard but I'm not sure where to begin.

 

Is there a preferred brand/model for the overall sprinkler system? (one that works best with ISY)

 

Are there certain brands/models which are limited in expansion? Or is ISY limited on it's own expansion (not sure exactly what the 8 zones will mean for my set up).

 

I've got a weatherbug station about .5 miles away, so I'd hope I could reliable use that for information that ISY would ultimately use. Anyone have advice if it's best to use weatherbug, or to install my own sensors? Are there any sensors you gotta have or wish you had?

 

Is this correct:

 

Sprinklers water is hooked to an irrigation controller. Controller is set to "always on". Wiring on the controller is somehow hooked up to receive on/off commands from 1-8 zones on the EZFlora and/or EZRain?

 

I'm day 1 into my research. Just need some beginners guidance. I don't want to spend tons of money on a controller with fancy features if they're never going to be used (as ISY would serve as the brain).

 

Any help would be much appreciated

[PurdueGuy]

Assuming you already have the wiring in place for up to 8 zones, you would just need an EZFlora and transformer.

 

Then you can use ISY logic to turn on zones as needed.

 

You don't need any other "controller" - the EZFlora is the controller.

 

The page here shows the wiring:

http://www.smarthome.com/31270/Smartenit-INSTEON-EZFlora-8-Zone-Sprinkler-Controller/p.aspx