Installing An Irrigation Controller
If you are not convinced of the need for an automatic irrigation timer, then you either don’t have a landscape or have never had anyone walk you through the reasons to go automatic. Of course, it may be you hand water things as therapy. You will still be ahead of the game if you automate your irrigation watering. Here’s a few reasons why.
1. If you have plants that need regular watering, whether it is a whole landscape, a veggie garden, or a few potted plants, you should set up an automatic timer to do the watering.
2. If you ever leave your home to go on vacation or if you travel for work, you should have an irrigation timer. Better to return home to lush, green, happy plants than limp, wimpy plants near deaths door.
3. Plants peform better with consistent watering schedules. Most plans will bounce back from lack of water. However, when your plant gets stressed from lack of water, it weakens it and it’s ability to do what healthy plants do – things like grow and bloom and fend off pests.
4. Save your precious time. Even if hand watering is something that you do as therapy, you can still opt to override your timer and do things by hand if you want to. However, you won’t have that option if you don’t have one installed. You are either a slave to your hose, or, you have to go around turning valves on and off for your system manually. This is a huge waste of time.
By now you should have realized that this installation on the installation of irrigation timers is for you. In fact, you may already have a timer and just need to change it out because it got old, or stopped working. Regardless, you are about walk through installing a timer with me step by step.
Of course, before installing a timer you have to have one. If you don’t already have one, you will need to buy one. And, since there are about as many different products on the market as there are days of the month, we will use one of my preferred vendors. Actually, there are 2 that I typically use. The first is a RainDial which comes in either 6, 9, or 12 station varieties. This is the one I use for normal residential installations. The other controller that I use is the Hunter ICC series. This comes in two models. The first is a plastic cabinet which can have stations added to it starting at 8 and going up to 32 in 4 station increments. The other model is a steel cabinet that goes up to 48 stations starting at 8 and continuing up in 4 station increments. These are for larger estates, parks, you know – large areas. As a large area controller, it also has an option for a remote control module that is invaluable when it comes time to do maintenance on these larger sites. Instead of shouting or radioing to your helper to turn a valve on or off, you simply press a button. Of course, if you have a smaller site but simply want to have the ability to turn on the irrigation remotely for neighborhood pets that have wandered into your front yard. Heck, use it for mail carriers who have wandered into your yard. Professionally, they are great for initiating new people onto your landscape crew.
OK, for starters, let’s assume you are using one of the slightly larger controllers. We’ll assume that because this is what I am installing in my yard. I could get away with a smaller controller, but, my yard isn’t just my yard. It is also my laboratory. This means I have quite a few valves for the different things I am experimenting with.
Step 1. You need to decide on an area to put you irrigation timer. For this first step you will be considering a few different things: How do I get power to my controller easily? How do I get the low voltage controller lines to my controller? Is it easily accessible? Smaller controllers usually come in 2 different configurations, the interior and the exterior. Simply, one goes inside, someplace protected from the elements like your garage, a breezeway, etc. Another, goes on the outside of your house where it is exposed to the elements like sun, wind and rain. There are 2 differences between these configurations. The interior will have a power supply or transformer that converts your house power of 110/120 volts to 18 volts. So, you just plug this into an outlet and voila you are ready to go. The exterior will have a cabinet that is sealed against the elements, and it will have a transformer inside the cabinet. This means that you will need to hardwire this into the power instead of simply plugging it in.
Here is what you’ll need:
1. A 3/8” electric drill. This can be cordless or with cord.
2. A black sharpie felt tipped marker.
3. A hammer.
4. A metal center punch.
5. A masonry bit for drilling small holes in stucco. If you are going into wood instead of stucco, you won’t need a punch.
6. A wood type drill bit for drilling holes through your timer cabinet so that it can be securely mounted to the wall.
7. A level. You can “eye-ball” your installation, but why not make sure that it’s level when you install it.
8. Some screws with matching plastic wall anchors.
9. A pair of wire strippers.
10. A screw driver.
For those of you who have never done this, I will be going step by step.
First, unpack your timer. You should have documentation as well as some hardware included for installing it.
Second, I like my timer solidly secured so I am going to drill some extra holes through the cabinet itself in order to provide for the extra mounting.
This would be a good time to remove the outer cabinet door as it makes performing different installation tasks easier without it. To remove the door, simply remove the stainless steel pin connecting the two halves together. To re-install, just insert it the way it came out.
Third, if you are hard wiring your timer as I am, make sure the breaker to your wires is turned off so that you don’t zap yourself. Once you have turned off the power, double check to be sure you got the right breaker for your wires by using a volt-meter or a “ticker” (it’s an inexpensive device that sounds an alarm when it senses electricity in a line). Now, you are ready.
Fourth, set your cabinet against the wall where you intend to mount it. Take a small torpedo level and verify that you are – level. Once you’ve got it level, put the tip of your felt tipped pen through the holes you drilled and mark where the holes are going to go on the wall.
Next, you are going to take your metal center punch, line it up on the marks from your pen and whack it with your hammer so that there is a little indentation. This helps keep your stucco drill bit centered and drilling in the right place. Then, take your stucco drill bit and put some holes where your marks are.
Place the plastic inserts into the fresh holes you made and tap them in with a hammer so that they are flush.
Once you’ve mounted the timer cabinet to the wall using the plastic inserts and screws, you can re-mount the timer face. This face, the portion with the LCD read- out un-attaches and re-attaches by simply flexing one of the plastic tabs that holds the timer face’s hinge pin. Next, you can re-attach the ribbon connector to the board. Note – it’s important to make sure you don’t have the power connected until after you complete this as sparks made while connecting or disconnecting this with power can damage the electronics.
At this point, you can see that I’ve already connected up my additional block of stations and wired them with the wires coming from the individual valves. Also, you can connect up the power to the wires to the timer as well. Then, you can turn on the power, set the date and the time, etc. These things are pretty intuitive on this particular brand of timer. That’s one of the reasons I use it. Timers have greater and lesser degrees of sophistication. However, they all more or less do the same thing. In my opinion, if you are just trying to program your timer for some basic functions, and it takes reading the manual and re-reading the manual, you should try another timer. Using your new irrigation controller, aka controller, aka timer should be straightforward and easy to do. If you need a tutorial on how to program this one, it has notes on the inside of the cabinet door. Nice, don’t you think.
