 A common mistake is often made when programming Hunter irrigation controllers. It is easy to confuse the “Start Times” screen with the “Run Times” screen
Start times refers to what time you want the irrigation to commence. Start time 1 is the first start time for the day. It will start with station 1 then 2 will commence straight after, then 3, then 4, then 5 and so on...
People often think that start time 2 is for station 2. It is not. Start time 2 is if you wish to do another cycle later in the day. For example start time 1 might be 6am and start time 2 might be 6pm. The stations will cycle through from the 1 st valve to the last depending on how much time was set in the “run times” feature. Station 2 will commence immediately after station 1 has finished.
What often happens is that people might set a start time of 6pm. They might set the run times for 15 minutes per station. They then think they need to set start time 2 for 6:15pm. This is a crucial error and I will explain why. The controller is smarter than you think. It will commence at 6pm and cycle through all valves until complete. Let’s say there are 6 valves and they are set for 15 minutes each. This means the complete cycle will finish at 7:30pm. The controller then realises that it was meant to start again at 6:15pm so it will run through the lot again.
It is common for people to accidentally have a 3 rd and 4 th start time so you can imagine the system will run through 4 complete cycles. When my phone rings and the customer says “I programmed my controller and its running all night” - it is 99 percent this error.
To turn off start times 2, 3 or 4 – set the time at midnight then hit the minus button. It should then say off.
Also don’t use program B or C unless you have to. These are usually for advanced features where you want a certain valve to do different things at different times. For example a shade house might need 3 waterings per day for 10 minutes each while the rest of the system just needs a single daily irrigation of 15 minutes per station. The shadehouse might be valve number 5. You would set a program B with 3 start times and only put run times for station 5 on program B. The book will explain this more.
Hope this helps |
