Best Sprinkler System For Control4 Integration

[cdcllc]

On 6/18/2023 at 3:14 PM, msgreenf said:

Seriously both of those are so cheap they are a joke. Water is way more in KY 

Didn't used to be.  Louisville water co - making the Ohio river's finest!  I can remember paying my ~$25 water bill that came ever other month - it cost too much to send the bill every month for the little collected.  Then we moved away in 1994 to Nashville and got "water bill shock" (along with real estate shock, etc.) right away.  But I digress 

[msgreenf]

37 minutes ago, cdcllc said:

Didn't used to be.  Louisville water co - making the Ohio river's finest!  I can remember paying my ~$25 water bill that came ever other month - it cost too much to send the bill every month for the little collected.  Then we moved away in 1994 to Nashville and got "water bill shock" (along with real estate shock, etc.) right away.  But I digress 

yeah Louisville Pure Tap (now branded) is one of the best systems for water taste in the country and the water part of the bill isn't bad.  It's the waste - MSD - that part of the bill has grown and grown..

[ajd123]

On 6/18/2023 at 3:14 PM, msgreenf said:

Seriously both of those are so cheap they are a joke. Water is way more in KY 

So true.  In Ontario I pay around $4 per cubic meter ($2 for water and $2 for sewage). 

In the summer months I can easily use 90-100 cubic meters per month verse around 25 cubic meters during non-watering seasons.  

[RAV]

10 hours ago, fleon said:

So, Rachio now has a hose bib valve.  I just picked one up to play with - no idea how well it works!  (Just thinking it might be a bit more elegant than the Pi, depending on what exacting you are doing with it)

Did you get it hooked up?
Does it work with the Control4 driver?

[RyanE]

A bit too expensive for my taste...

RyanE

[fleon]

It's not much different than the other similar systems.  And those have a terrible interface.  Having said that, I haven't tried mine yet.

[Neo1738]

3 acres of grass and 9 flower beds....use irrigation for grass, city water for flowers ( so doesn't stain house) have septic so no waste to need 2nd meter. Rachio has been working perfectly for me.

[zaphod]

On 6/21/2023 at 2:35 AM, fleon said:

So, Rachio now has a hose bib valve.  I just picked one up to play with - no idea how well it works!  (Just thinking it might be a bit more elegant than the Pi, depending on what exacting you are doing with it)

By Hose Bib Valve do you mean this:  https://rachio.com/products/smart-hose-timer-kit/

[TundraSonic]

Rainbird's IQ4 controllers have been experiencing a LOT of problems the past 2 years. They are poorly programmed, remote access can be slow or non-existent, if you manually open a zone it might take 5 minutes for an acknowledgement (and all the while you're not sure if it's running or not). In some regions of the U.S. their weather data are so bad that we can't use any ET capabilities and have to rely on time only (in MN it will predict 107°f when actual is 84°f so each zone unnecessarily runs for 3x as long).  I'd stay far away from Rainbird.

Hunter is overall great and well designed except for WiFi problems with newer AP's and no positive feedback loop. You can tell it to turn a zone on and it will say it's done it (rather than wait for the controller to positively acknowledge) but the controller's having WiFi problems so it's not actually on even though it said that it was. Also there is NO ETHERNET for Hydrawise systems, only unreliable WiFi.

Big fan or Rachio for small systems but lack of 2-wire support (most I know are doing 2-wire even for small systems now) and 16 zone limit is a problem.