Pre-wire for sprinkler control?

[wkearney99]

What's the recommended plan for pre-wiring sprinklers?
 
We're building a new place and now's the time to put some wall into the wires.  In the past we had a combination of drip and pop-up sprinkler heads for our outdoor plants.  It worked well.  I had basically three zones: front grass, back grass and plant drips.  This to manage the available water pressure.  This was done on the outside using a zoned timer screwed onto a hose bib connection.  Couldn't complain, it worked.
 
So as we build the new place I'm leaning toward entertaining options to automate the system a bit better.  Like being able to override when it's rained enough to not need it, during water restrictions or extra because it's been dry.  I don't expect this to be entirely 'automagic' but I'd like it to be a little easier than my having to go out to the spigot and deal with the teeny little buttons on the timer.
 
I've got an Elk system going in to interface between motion sensors and our RadioRA2 lighting, that's all it's doing.  I'm thinking it'll likely have enough free time and programming space to handle controlling some sprinklers.  
 
But my question is what wires (kind and gauge) to run from the exit on the basement wall back to where the Elk is situated.  I will not have open access to the inside of that wall once the drywall is up. 
 
What should wires would be recommended?  And, for that matter, what interface or other controller gizmos would be involved?

 

[pete_c]

Relating to the infrastructure and what I did:
 
I have a cluster of 10-16 16-18 guage solid core wire in a pvc jacket to where the manifold is.  The manifold is made up of PVC tubing.
 
I have 10 sprinkler zones each with 5-6 heads.   I have copper plumbing and had a separate from the main water ingress run for just the sprinkler system feed.  That said the copper plumbing has a separate water valve (two of them inside and one outside), water meter and pressure guage.  (the plumbing is somewhat modular?).
 
I moved to current home in 2003 (in a new subdivision)  and the water pressure was at around 20lbs until maybe 2009 or so.  I installed a supplimental pump to bring up the whole house water pressure such that I could utilize an outdoor sprinkling system.
 
I purchased a Davey pump for that purpose.  Excellent quality stuff. 
 
In summary
 
1 - wires to where your outdoor manifold is to where your controller will be. 
 
Personally mine is on the other side of my home.  Outdoors it runs some 75 feet and indoors another maybe 100 feet to the garage.  Where the controller is in the garage I have multiple cat5e runs from the comm closet to the sprinkler box.  (initially it was just a serial connection.  Today there are 3 network devices plus 1 serial device inside of my sprinkler box).  There is also a 24VAC power feed going into the box.  Most of the LV stuff runs to the "comm closet area".
 
2 - extra wires to the inside of your controller box (I have network, serial and power).  My sprinkler controller boxes are in the garage in the midwest and in Florida. 
 
3 - plumbing infrastructure relating to automation (optional): water valves, water pressure guages and water meter.
 
4 - lightning protection
 
Our water rates have now gone up some 400%  since 2003 such that this past summer I was really utilizing (paying attention) to the sprinkler software that I am using.  It is integrated with my weather station and some outdoor sensors  You can just utilize the internet though for weather.
 
Both of my sprinkler systems were installed originally by Rainbird Sprinkler system installers and both were originally using the same controller. 
 
In FL they used rigid PVC pipes for the zones mostly.  The manifolds are about 150 feet from the controller.  I have had issues with sand and salt water and lighting taking out the Rainbird controller (just a fuse though) and the solenoids for the zones and messing with the sprinkler heads (not any of the drip zones).  It is only utilizing the Rainbird controller today. The water supply for the sprinkler system was changed to a common neighborhood (50 houses) well about 6 years ago (added a filter on the ingress well water supply).
 
In IL I have had only one lightning strike affect the sprinkler system in 10 years of use.  No problems with the solenoids or sprinkler heads.  The lightning did take out the two Rain8Nets that I was using.  This past issue (and now have lighting protection set up) convinced me never to connect my sprinkler system directly to my HAI OPII panel.  It was easy to replace the Rain8nets.  It would have been a real PITA to replace my OPII if lightning had damaged it.  IE: the neighbor lost his alarm panel (along with TVs and appliances) with the same mentioned lightning strike

 

[iostream212]

I ran cat5 between my rainbird and elk relay board. Been working fine for years. You can control the system via both automation or locally. However the way I hooked it up I can't see if the system is running manually through the automation system. Usually I'll have the rainbird set to off and run via automation system. When I go out of town I can turn off automation and run via the rainbird. Did a write-up a bit ago here

 

[kurtmccaslin]

In order to design your sprinkler system, you need to answer a few questions:
 
1) Manifold or distributed valves?   Most pros scatter the valves throughout the yard and skip the manifold.   A manifold requires more labor and materials to install.   However, the distributed valves are tougher to find when they fail.   The pros normally use a wire tracer then probe for them with a metal probe.   Most DIY's go the manifold route to make it easier to repair in the future.   If you go with a manifold, you will normally run 18 ga multi-conductor direct burial cable to each manifold.   For a distributed system, it is single conductor direct burial sprinkler wire.
 
2) Location for the controller?  Generally the garage.   The direct burial cable that I have seen is not rated for in-wall use.   Therefore, if you plan to run the wire back to your automation closet, you may need to build a junction box and transition to CL 2 cable at the garage wall.   I have never done this.   I always put mine in the garage.
 
3) Type of controller?   The basic controller you can buy at a big box store is a timer where you can vary the amount of time for each circuit and the number of times watering per week.    These can be connected to a rain sensor that turns the sprinkler off until the sensor dries out.    The problem with these is the amount of water required in winter is a lot different than in summer.   Therefore, most have a percentage control.   I have one of these with the rain sensor.   I have to adjust the percentage controller manually every month to get the right amount of water.   Not very automated.   Some day, I would like to build a system using an automated controller that uses weather to control the system.   MCS sprinkler is an example.   There are controllers that pull the weather off of the internet, and others that use rain, wind, temp sensors.  
 
4) The type of sprinkler heads?   drippers, spray heads, and rotary gear heads have significantly different patterns and watering rates.   It is critical to put only one type of sprinkler head on each circuit if you use a mixed system.   I have one circuit dedicated to drippers in my wife's potted plants.   She loves it.   The rotary gear heads are great for watering large areas.

 

[dgage]

I setup my front valves in one part of the yard and my valves for the back in another part. I then ran double the amount of wire I needed and put that wire UNDER the PVC pipe to protect the wire. This allows me to make sure that even if there is a problem with one cable or set of wires, that I will have redundancy and shouldn't ever need to rerun irrigation wire.

When choosing heads, you have to match the heads as a 90 degree spray will put out twice the area of a 180 spray using most systems. I didn't want to deal with that so I went with the Hunter MP Rotators, which put out consistent water volumes even with different coverage arcs. I also like it because the reduced water rate of the MP Rotators works better with my clay soil. I have a large yard and used the MP Rotators but that required some sprays in the center of the yard. I might have been able to use perimeter sprays with traditional spray heads.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Also, when designing your landscape, try to keep the sprinklers away from exterior walls and the house itself.  If you have bushes for instance, you can use bubblers and thus prevent spray from getting to those exterior paint jobs and windows!

 

[pete_c]

Here in the midwest the sprinkler installation company put the manifold box some 20 feet from the house in a berm.  It's a bit elevated and covered with a thin layer of landscaping stone. (lava stone).  Initially when it was serviced they would manually turn on and off the valves in the manifold box by bypassing the ESP Rainbird controller installed in the garage.  This made it easy to service when no one was home.  I did initially purchase the Rainbird wireless remote control system for the ESP controller and it worked just fine. 
 
I still remove the antisyphon/backflow/RPZ valve in the fall and install it again in the spring.  I utilize an old X10 to WGL W800 for remote control of each of the valves to test the zones in the spring and to clear the lines in the fall.  I drain my lines/zones every fall and it is a PITA with the smaller air compressor that I utilize.  It had though become a costly endeavor with the spring startup costs, RPZ valve certification and fall shutdown costs.  (some maybe $250 plus per season).  The neighbors have the self draining zones and they have been just fine for the last 10 years or so.  One neighbor forgot about his RPZ valve and left out out during the winter.  It broke with the winter freeze and he couldn't find an RPZ valve for less than $300 or so.  Some folks install a out on the water lines for use for fertilizer et al. 
 
Here I do adjust the spray for best coverage depending on the heads. 
 
I utilize the software though such that the watering doesn't occur with a certain wind speed average that it gets from the weather station.  I use evapotranspiration numbers mostly though to guage the water content in the soil.  It gets involved with the scheduling; such that its a per day thing, then per whatever the ET is then the hard numbers from the weather station and other stuff outside.  My preference is to utilize what I have installed versus the weather from the internet.  We had a bit of a drought last summer and I was able to keep my grass relatively green with sparse watering.  I really didn't pay much attention when the water rates were low.  In FL in the small subdivision of 50 homes a common well system was put in to provide the landscaping sprinkler water for free; so there its just a time/day schedule on the Rainbird controller. 

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Yea, good point about the wind speed indicator Pete as I do the same here (one advantage of having a great home automation infrastructure with everything tied to one server).
 
I also often wondered about some type of soil moisture detection to incorporate with my watering schedule, but haven't yet dabbled into that area.

 

[pete_c]

I guess the farming community utilizes ET for guaging soil moisture content and its kind of a science in itself.  The number though is derived from solar, wind, temperature et all.  It's nice though because it "guesses" at the soil moisture and the rate of evaporation.  With the water meters and an outside "bucket" test during sprinkling I was able to guesstimate number of inches of watering using the water flow, sprinkler heads and actual numbers from outside.  Personally like doing the visuals to validate the digital stuff.  IE: I did the same in FL for looking at the rate of evaporation of water in the pool to check for leaks (which I thought I did have at one time).
 
I did try the gypsum soil sensors and while they do work its making a guess that all of your lawn is the same number (shade or sunny?).
 
This is though where I utilize a 1-wire network outside for various devices plus the Davis weather station numbers.  My light sensor works enough such that I can tell if its sunny or cloudy outside and that too has an effect on the ET numbers.  For precise UV radiation numbers you can get a $300 UV solar sensor which also provides some nice numbers but is a bit overboard for the DIY sprinkler system stuff.  Some DIY folks though have made one with a 1-wire light sensor inside of a ping pong ball and mounted very high up such that the sun hits it no matter what time of the it is.
 
The price point / logic of having sprinkler solenoids spread out makes sense but can be a maintainance nightmare.  Really with good water pressure I have no issues with the zones being some 250 feet or more from the sprinkler manifold.  The water really needs to get there whether the solenoid is local or far away anyways.  I do recall though that the installer just connected the zones to the ESP controller such that they functions but in no particular order.  I redid the wiring such that it followed a clockwise sprinkler zone logic from the front to the side to the back to the other side back to the front wiring.  Labeled all of the wires inside of the manifold box and in the sprinkler box. 

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Interesting, I already have a solar sensor, might have to look into this again.

 

[pete_c]

This actually takes sprinkling your grass to a different level. 
 
You cannot replicate this logic with the consumer embedded controllers or event an HAI or Elk panel easily.  Imagine how many lines of events/logic you would need in the Elk or HAI controller to calculate ET using analog connected devices.
 
I am kind of running embedded software a bit with the same wintel landscaping sprinkler software ported over to Arch linux running off a usb stick plugged into a tiny arm based CPU (seagate dockstar).  It would be nice to have that logic or a means to control that logic built into the Rainbird ESP system.  They do it golf courses but mostly it still using mostly software to control the logic.  Really today its just one chip on the the controller board with a network interface; you could keep the same analog timing stuff and just have some more intelligence built into it.

 

[JimS]

I would run at least a Cat5 to the location for the sprinkler controller.  That way you can do ethernet, serial, etc.  If you do the simple rain sensor that turns on and off a standard timer (not that great of solution as previously noted) those are often wireless and don't need extra wiring.  If you want to use internet weather or a weather station then some connection to a computer or some such is needed. 
 
The wires to the zone valves is usually #18 with as many conductors as valves + 1 (for the common wire).  It's good to have some extra conductors for expansion or when one of the wires breaks in an unknown location.  Cable is direct burial type specifically made for sprinkler systems.
 
You should also think about a bigger pipe tap to feed the whole thing instead of a faucet.  If the faucet works that's hard to argue with but normally a 3/4" or 1" connection is made to the incoming water line for sprinklers.  On mine there is a shut off for winter and a drain valve to empty the line for freezing conditions.  From there it goes out through the rim joist.  Outside there is an RPZ the feeds the master valve, then individual zone valves. 
 
A good place to read up on sprinkler systems is http://www.irrigationtutorials.com/

 

[DIYHO]

18 gauge multistrand is the smallest wire I would run to valves.  For in wall applications, get multistrand thermostat cable and make sure you have extra conductors.
 
With respect to residential "smart" controllers, you can't go wrong with the Rainbird ESP-SMT.  When properly programmed for a site with accurate hydrozoning it will be be more than adequate for most anyones needs.  That said, there is no controller on the planet that can make a poorly designed, installed and maintained irrigation system work effectively and efficiently.

 

[picta]

Irrigation is one of the best projects for home automation, one can really utilize some "rocket science" for it. It may be an overkill for many homes, but could be real fun for the enthusiast, especially if you have extensive garden with variety of plants.  All the logic for optimizing my watering schedule is determined by software program. It uses data from Davis weather station, soil sensors, weather forecast and historical data to schedule the times for valves to turn on and off. I use WGL controller to operate the valves. The end result is a healthy garden and low water bill.
 
Besides already mentioned wire requirements, I would recommend installing a water meter and electronic shut-off valve at the main pipe providing water to the system. The irrigation systems do break, and you can shut off the water before you ruin your yard pumping endless flow to the ground. I use the meter both to detect the leaks, and to service the exact amount of water that my software calculates.

 

[tmbrown97]

There's a lot of good tips here for really taking sprinkler automation to the next level!  At some point I know I'd like to incorporate some moisture detection so I can give each of my plants and areas exactly as much water as they need.  In the mean time, to try to simplify the answer to the OP:
 
What I've been doing in a couple houses now is to run a Cat5 from the Elk to the sprinkler timer location (here it's in the garage) - then instead of running a standard sprinkler timer, I used the 14" can that came with the Elk and mounted that in the garage and inside that, I mounted an Elk M1XOVR and an M1RB in the can... then I wired up the sprinkler valves into that.  It's perfectly doable to hook that in parallel with a regular timer by having the timer hooked inline with the relays on the NC contacts but I saw no point.
 
I created rules so that to start, a phantom output turns on so I know the system is running via automation; then as each zone turns off, the next kicks on; I manually update things through RP but it'd be incredibly easy to have it read off counters.