So pop over to the NASA Human Space Flight sattelite tracker info for the US, choose a state, city and then go outside and look up in the sky in the directions it mentions, at the times it mentioned, and you should be able to experience the repeating surprise and wonder at seeing a man made object flying through the sky hundreds of miles above the earth.

If you’re not in the US, you can still go to the main NASA Human Space Flight tracker page, choose your country from the drop down in the bottom left corner and get to work.

Vigoro  3015V Water Timer / Sprinkler Timer

We ended up going with some garden / home improvement store variety water timers that you just hook your hose to.  The first one we purchased was a ‘Vigoro Model 3015v” branded item which had a lot of programming flexibility, manual override and, in this package, the moisture sensor. The water timer without the sensor function is $24.95 at home depot. It is pictured below.

Overall this seemed like a pretty good timer. It has a lot of flexibility in the programming schedule. You set the current time (in hours only) and set the start time (in hours only). You then program how often the timer will open the valve in hours or days to water your lawn, and for how long it will do it each time, in minutes, or hours.

We used this unit at first on four oscillating fan type sprinklers. I noticed right away that the water pressure to the sprinklers was very low when they were ran and series (VALVE –> SPRINKLER –> SPRINKLER –> SPRINKLER –> LAST SPRINKLER) type setup. I bought a 4 way splitter valve and then split the hose 4 ways to the 4 separate sprinklers. This evened out the pressure much better (and is called a parallel configuration)

While the water pressure had improved with the 4-way hose splitter, but it was still weak, this of course is not the sprinkler timers fault but just additional useful information.

The water sensor does a reasonable job, and lets you set how sensitive is.  The setting varies from 1 water drop to 3 water drops to tell the system how wet you want your ground. If the moisture sensor detects that your lawn is wet, to the level you selected, the main unit will bypass any sprinkling times until your lawn dries out enough to require watering again.

Special Note: Attach your hose to this unit before attaching the wireless receiving antenna.  It is much more difficult to get the hose on when the antennas is attached! (You’re welcome!)

Model: Vigoro 3015V  Water Timer / Sprinkler Timer w/Wireless Moisture Sensor
Cost: $24.95 (excluding moisture sensor feature)
Pros: Simple to setup, manual override, reliable, easy to read.
Cons: Splits hours evenly.  a 6/noon/6 schedule is not possible, you only get a midnight/6/noon/6 schedule, and I didn’t want to water our lawn at midnight and I didn’t want to water too early in the morning, or too late at night like I could achieve with an 3 x 8hr schedule.
Note: They do make a 2 zone programmable timer with more features for another 15 dollars.  So while this model wasn’t optimal for us, the other one may be an improvement. Additionally, this is a re-branded Orbit product.

Orbit 4 Zone Water Timer / Sprinkler Timer

After messing with the Vigoro module and having the water pressure problems as well as the ‘watering at midnight’ problem as well with that unit I decided to go to Lowe’s and see what they had in the way of a timer with multiple zones. Well, there wasn’t a lot available other than this Orbit ‘Complete Yard Watering Kit’. In all honestly it didn’t come with the 300 feet of hose or 5 25 dollar sprinklers But it did come with a 4 way valve manifold, the timer module and 2 electronic valves, expandable to 4 (additional valves are 12.95, mail order only from Lowe’s site).

This timer seems pretty well built, and it’s pretty easy to setup. It is somewhat the same parameters as the Vigoro module above with the addition of individual zones.  As an added bonus, they seemed to know you did not want to water your lawn at midnight, and it allows you to set a schedule for 6am, Noon and 6pm, and to skip any overnight watering possibilities.  GOOD IDEA!

With the addition of multiple valves, you have multiple sprinkler zones. I split the sprinklers down into 2 watering zones for the main peninsula lawn and set the timer to run both sets of control valves, one at a time, for 20 minutes during each watering period for the new lawn. It works great and reliably.

I like this timer much better, but it has it’s own problems as well. While the programmable portion of the timer is pretty great. The fact that you have to buy additional zone valves via mail order only is kind of a lame, but not impassable barrier. Additionally in manual mode it would have been a nice feature to be able to set individual times for each zone. With this module you can turn on one sprinkler zone for X minutes.  Or alternately you can turn on all zones for X minutes. You cannot set Zone 1 for 10 minutes, Zone 2 for 20 minutes, Zone 3 for 10 minutes, etc.

Model: Orbit Complete Yard Watering Kit (Model #: 91591)
Cost: No longer available, cheaper version now available for around $49
Pros: Very flexible timing options and multiple zones. Expands up to 4 valves and is reliable. While discontinued the additional valves are still currently available.
Cons: You can only buy sprinkler zone control valves through mail-order. This product has apparently been replaced by the 27908 model for $48.97 which seems of lower quality and construction, though it has a lower profile as well.

Summary

I wasted so much time and money with these stupid sprinkler timers we might have been better off trenching and putting in my own sprinkler system. By the time we got everything taken care of working right, the amount of money spent on sprinklers, hoses, timers, watering at weird hours, etc could have just been resolved with a real sprinkler system with a multi-zone timer for a couple hundred more. If you’re not able to do your own sprinkler system installation, then these may be the way to go, if you’re just being lazy you’ll regret it. Perhaps next year, things are working okay for now but not optimal.

If you liked this article, please see my other Lawn Related Posts and also my new article where I disassemble the Vigoro 3015v to see how the valve works.