Weather based water level bug?

[marcoo624]

Wondering if what I think I'm experiencing is accurate and if so this seems like a bug.

My watering schedule is early morning and it takes the 4 day history and a 3 day forecast. Seems in the morning the watering % will be much lower than say at noon when it gets hotter. At the moment the weather has been pretty stable (ie. Same night lows and day highs, not much variance) so I would have expected the watering % to also be pretty stable but not seeing that.

The plugin appears to be using the sprinkler turn on times to adjust the watering schedule and not accounting for the whole day. I'm in San Diego so currently morning temps are around 65 or less but during the day closer to 95.

Anyone seeing similar results?

[PolarBear56]

Wondering if what I think I'm experiencing is accurate and if so this seems like a bug.

My watering schedule is early morning and it takes the 4 day history and a 3 day forecast. Seems in the morning the watering % will be much lower than say at noon when it gets hotter. At the moment the weather has been pretty stable (ie. Same night lows and day highs, not much variance) so I would have expected the watering % to also be pretty stable but not seeing that.

The plugin appears to be using the sprinkler turn on times to adjust the watering schedule and not accounting for the whole day. I'm in San Diego so currently morning temps are around 65 or less but during the day closer to 95.

Anyone seeing similar results?

I had the same issue last year. We went through a heat wave with temps in the mid 30s and no clouds for about 2 weeks. Would only run for about 50% of the scheduled time.

Kinda wish I knew more about code to better understand what is under the hood.

Cheers!

[dan]

I'm not totally familiar with the workings of the weather plugin. Looking at the code in weather_level_adj.py lines 153 to 180 it looks like it uses temperature, wind and humidity as well as previous rain to set a percentage of scheduled irrigation time.

@ marcoo624:
I am near Sacramento and we are about to enter mandatory water use restrictions. My entire outdoor watering is under drip irrigation but still uses more than the allocated amount. I have started to install watermark soil moisture sensors which can provide a much more accurate estimate of irrigation needs than weather based estimates.
The plan is to develop a plugin that uses sensor data for irrigation management. Documentation for the sensors does state that user experience is a key factor in proper irrigation management:
https://www.irrometer.com/sensors.html#wm

Dan

[marcoo624]

I'm not totally familiar with the workings of the weather plugin. Looking at the code in weather_level_adj.py lines 153 to 180 it looks like it uses temperature, wind and humidity as well as previous rain to set a percentage of scheduled irrigation time.

@ marcoo624:
I am near Sacramento and we are about to enter mandatory water use restrictions. My entire outdoor watering is under drip irrigation but still uses more than the allocated amount. I have started to install watermark soil moisture sensors which can provide a much more accurate estimate of irrigation needs than weather based estimates.
The plan is to develop a plugin that uses sensor data for irrigation management. Documentation for the sensors does state that user experience is a key factor in proper irrigation management:
https://www.irrometer.com/sensors.html#wm

Dan

That's very cool, this is the ultimate way to go I believe. Temperature monitoring was always a "better than nothing" solution in my opinion.

[jtrickey]

Marcoo624:

Same issue here in Bakersfield, CA. Temps have been into the low 100's the last few days, but water is being adjusted to 30%.

Don't have much more to contribute than this, just wanted to comment that you're not the only one having an issue.

Jerry

[RandyBryant]

I'm not totally familiar with the workings of the weather plugin. Looking at the code in weather_level_adj.py lines 153 to 180 it looks like it uses temperature, wind and humidity as well as previous rain to set a percentage of scheduled irrigation time.

@ marcoo624:
I am near Sacramento and we are about to enter mandatory water use restrictions. My entire outdoor watering is under drip irrigation but still uses more than the allocated amount. I have started to install watermark soil moisture sensors which can provide a much more accurate estimate of irrigation needs than weather based estimates.
The plan is to develop a plugin that uses sensor data for irrigation management. Documentation for the sensors does state that user experience is a key factor in proper irrigation management:
https://www.irrometer.com/sensors.html#wm

Dan

I think I found a rain related bug in the plugin.  Can you help contact the author so I can discuss it with him?

Randy

[dan]

Randy,

The weather_level_adj plugin was written, revised and re-revised by a number of contributors over time. There is not a single point of contact for an author. I doubt that anyone has a complete knowledge of the code at this point.

One problem with online weather sources is the fact that their spacial resolution is not that fine grained. Unless you have a personal weather station the data can be rather iffy.

Dan