Planning for irrigation system

[mlennox]

I'm about to hire a contractor to install a 6 zone irrigation system at my house, which includes a Hunter Pro-C Timer/Controller and an outdoor rain sensor.

 

Ultimately I will want to control the system through INSTEON commands with my ISY-99i controller.

 

My question is what do I need to make this happen. I've seen the EZFlora product, is this supported by ISY-99i and are there programming templates for this? Should I bother with the Hunter Pro-C? What about the rain sensor? Are there other sensors I should consider or is WeatherBug the way to go? I believe the Pro-C controller has some sort of optional IR interface that can be attached for integration with home automation systems.

 

Any other advise or tips I should consider?

 

Thanks in advance.

[Mark Sanctuary]

Kind of a mixed bag...

 

The EZFlora is a good product and the ISY controls it well. I have not had any issues so far in the couple months I have had mine. I created programming to run it automatically and also controllable manually. Plus I have the ISY timestamps of the programs that show me when each valve last ran. I like mine but I am a tinkerer and like to fiddle with things myself.

 

Currently the ISY supports direct control of the EZFlora nodes, so with this in mind you have to do all the programming in the ISY to give you the function of a normal irrigation controller. Setting up the programming to run it is not too bad, there are examples in the forum and Wiki so that is not to big of an issue. One nice thing is the example programs use the weatherbug data to handle rain and temp variables.

 

It is a more hands on approach compared to the Hunter which would be a bit more simple setup and your done, but if you don't mind a bit of tinkering the coolness of being able to integrate with a Keypadlinc or Remotelinc, you will like the flexible control. For example when I want to run it in manual mode I just grab my Remotelinc and turn it on. If I have a dipper broken its handy to have the Remotelinc in hand to run the manual mode when I am repairing it in the yard.

 

Hope my rambling is useful.

 

Thanks,

[mlennox]

Thanks Mark,

 

That's helpful, and kind of what I figured. I certainly don't mind tinkering, in fact I enjoy it, but since I may not have time to do this for several months, I may just go with the Hunter Controller for the time being and change later. As long as I have access to the valve wire leads I can always switch later.

 

What about the rain sensor, or any of the other possible sensor add-ons? Can the EZFlora and/or ISY use these sensors for additional insight on top of WeatherBug?

[Mark Sanctuary]

I am not using a rain sensor currently but rather am just going by the weatherbug data. I am sure you could use the IOLinc rain sensor to catch that info and easily handle it thru ISY programming though.

 

I did the same... I ran with a Toro ECXTRA timer for a year or two and later switched, what pushed me over was the ECXTRA was a piece of junk and gave me lots of issues and I finally got fed up and jumped in on the EZFlora. So a small warning is you may like the Hunter and end up not changing it.

 

Thanks,

[GPG]

Having the Hunter controller would not be a bad idea, since it would always be available as a backup should the EZflora fail at some point. But you will absolutely love controlling the system with the ISY.

 

I've been running the unit (it was called EZrain when I bought it) for several years and have had excellent reliability. I had a rain sensor at one point, but now rely on information from WeatherBug entirely. The system skips watering if there has been heavy rain the day before or light rain since midnight. That's as complex as I need, but the possibilities are endless.

 

As Mark stated, having the ability to use a remote is cool, but I also find it very useful when fine tuning the sprinkler heads. It save a lot of trips back and forth to the controller between adjustments.

 

An additional advantage I find is the ability to control the system remotely from either my work computer or Blackberry handheld.

 

Good Luck,

-George

[me23]

Anyone have issues running two ezfloras. I've got 10 zones. Also, can you just leave your current controller hooked up and off, and just splice to the ezfloras. That way you could always have the pro-c for backup

[LeeG]

me23

 

You can have as many EZFlora devices as necessary. They each have a unique Insteon address. There is no means of coordinating multiple EZFlroa devices so if Zone 8 is controlling a "Pump†you would need Zone 8 on each EZFlora to control the same pump.

 

I believe (although not absolutely sure) that relays are NOT used to energize a zone valve. The electronic component in the EZFlora for controlling each Zone valve might read as a Zone valve problem by the other controller if connected in parallel with the other controller. Certainly do not know that to be a problem. The controller I had before using EZFlora had some detection circuit if a valve circuit did not present the expected resistance. Discovered it when the pump control relay went south. The controller went dark when trying to turn on the pump. Easy enough to pull the plug connector on the EZFlora should a parallel connection turn out to be a problem for the old controller and you wanted to go back to that controller for backup. I have not tried to connect my old controller and EZFlora in parallel.

 

Lee

[paulw]

Had a similar problem with a EZFlora running in parallel with a Rainbird controller. For many weeks it was fine. Then I came home one night to have my pump running with no zones active, seems to have been that way for several hours. I was using the EZFlora exclusively but had left the Rainbird there as backup should I want to use it.

 

Turned out the Rainbird had activated the pump. Removed the Rainbird controller and have not had a problem since.