Rain Bird SMT controller - zone with external water source

[justdave]

So I'm setting up a Rain Bird ESP-SMT system with the weather-based controls, and there is one zone in the yard which basically contains a drainage swale that handles runoff from two neighboring pieces of property. Basically, if there's been any rain recently, it's got plenty of water, without the sprinklers running at all. Is there some way to tell the controller not to bother running the sprinklers in that zone at all unless it hasn't rained in a week or something? The most logical place to toss a variable into the formula would be to tell it to treat the effective rainfall as 3x the real value just for that zone, but I'm not finding a way to adjust that. All I can find is the percentage adjustment for the zone, and the most it'll let me do there is -30% (which probably isn't enough).

Is there some other trick that might work good for this? (Lie to it on the soil type for that zone perhaps? If so, what'd be best to tell it?)

[FIMCO-MEISTER]

Originally Posted by justdave

So I'm setting up a Rain Bird ESP-SMT system with the weather-based controls, and there is one zone in the yard which basically contains a drainage swale that handles runoff from two neighboring pieces of property. Basically, if there's been any rain recently, it's got plenty of water, without the sprinklers running at all. Is there some way to tell the controller not to bother running the sprinklers in that zone at all unless it hasn't rained in a week or something? The most logical place to toss a variable into the formula would be to tell it to treat the effective rainfall as 3x the real value just for that zone, but I'm not finding a way to adjust that. All I can find is the percentage adjustment for the zone, and the most it'll let me do there is -30% (which probably isn't enough).

Is there some other trick that might work good for this? (Lie to it on the soil type for that zone perhaps? If so, what'd be best to tell it?)

Kiril made a good suggestion on something similar to this. Give it a full shade designation and maybe change it to low water need plants.

[justdave]

Originally Posted by FIMCO-MEISTER

Kiril made a good suggestion on something similar to this. Give it a full shade designation and maybe change it to low water need plants.

That seems to do the job nicely, thanks!

[Mike Leary]

Originally Posted by justdave

That seems to do the job nicely, thanks!

Hard to believe the forum actually accomplished something.

[FIMCO-MEISTER]

Don't mix me with some socialist forum.