Finally … after months of trying I finally got our garden watering system working. That may not be quite as exciting for you as it is for me but I’m getting ready to kill the fatted calf for the celebrations.
We moved into our current home in August last year so for the first few months we were there we didn’t need to water our garden. God took care of that for us.
Over the past few months I’ve been trying to get the controller programmed to do what it needs to do. I’d set it to run each station for ten minutes but when the time for it to start rolled around it would only ever run each station for three minutes. I’d check and re-check the programming but everything was set correctly. It was definitely displaying ten minutes for each station yet it refused to water any section of our garden for more than three minutes.
I ended up turning each station on manually on our watering days. (In Perth we are under watering restrictions and can only use sprinklers twice a week on designated days.)
Finally, last weekend, I pulled the plug on the controller for a couple of hours. I removed the backup battery and pulled the fuse on the main supply. It was a kind of reboot. I then reprogrammed everything following the same steps I’d followed several times before. I had no idea if it worked because today was our next watering day and the first opportunity to see if it could get past three minutes.
This morning I woke to the sound of running water. It’s finally doing what it should. I’m not going to touch it ever again.
I know that getting a watering controller sorted isn’t quite the same as discovering a cure for the common cold but sometimes you’ve got to appreciate and celebrate the small victories.
One of the big benefits of moving house last year is that we now have a much smaller garden.
