Today, the Blackbird Realty blog is at the S & J Landscaping Water Clock Training Facility to learn how to program your water clock. Las Vegas has four seasons a year which require your water clock to be changed. This is a big headache for most local property managers because none of your tenants are going to know how to change a water clock. We'll get a little training today from Jimmi McKee from McKee Development and S & J Landscaping so you know how to make sure your lawn is getting the water it needs depending on the season.
There are lots of different water clock types, but they all have the same function. Each one has a battery and that battery should be changed once a year. If you have a power outage or surge, a functioning battery will save your data.
Take a look at your water clock, where you'll see an auto setting and a date/time setting. Make sure the date and time are correct. I'm using a Rain Bird dial here as an example and what you have to remember is to hit the enter button every time you are finished programming something so that it saves your settings.
Begin with your start time. This will tell you what time of day you want the clock to come on. Hit the plus key and set it at whatever time you want watering to begin. Maybe that's 12:24 a.m. In Las Vegas, you'll water differently in the summer than in the winter. So, enter the time and save it. Then you can go down to the next time you want watering to start. Maybe that's 2:00 a.m. Hit enter to save it. Then, you can keep moving down to program as many watering times as you want. We'll hit the plus button and do one more setting and then hit enter to save it. Make sure you pay attention to the a.m. and p.m. settings so you get what you want. All of your watering times will be saved in this program. Next is the station duration, which is going to let you program how long you want to water. Right now for grass, it may be 5 minutes. Your drip system might be 20 to 25 minutes. Hit the plus key and set five minutes for your grass, then 20 minutes for the next watering cycle. Remember to hit enter after every setting. For your third watering schedule, do another 5 minutes and save it by hitting that enter button.
Finally, you can set your watering days. Maybe just one day a week at this time of year will work, but later you'll want to water several days. Tab across on your water clock and you'll see the days. Hit the plus key for wherever you want it and hit enter.
In our example, we programmed the water for two times a week, three times a day and the correct duration of run times. Once all that is saved, put the clock back to auto - it's very important to notice both the auto and run settings. This ensures the clock functions correctly. Setting a water clock is the same for most of the models, particularly for Irritrol and Lawn Genie, which are in the same family. It's the same process for Rain Bird and Water Master as well. Rain Dial has a bar in the bottom where you can see off, run and program. There are the same features with plus and minus buttons, valve run times, schedules and start times. However, if you have a Nielson, or a Toro, just call us and we will program for you because they aren't very user friendly at all.
Hopefully, you have learned all you need to know about setting a water clock. If you need more information, please contact us at Blackbird Realty and Property Management.