Jumping back in

[James Sentman]

> On Oct 20, 2019, at 10:41 AM, Chad Gard <chad at holeinthewoodsfarm.com> wrote:
> 
> I guess that depends on your definition of "cheap."  Most of what I've seen on 2" 24v valves run in the $200-$400 range each.  I need 18 of them, plus wire, power supply, and relays so I can stop spending all of my time wandering around the farm with my 5' long irrigation valve key (I burried all the irrigation pipe 4' down so I don't have to worry about freezing,can use it to help protect blossoms from late frosts, etc.  The valves are housed in drain tile lined holes so can get to them with the key).  Most likely I would look to controllingwith xtension, and puting some error checking to deal with the possibility of miscommunicating an off.  While an irrigation zone running long is an unfortunate waste of electricity and water, most of the time I'd likely catch it before too long.  If it happens while I'm away, I might have an employee on sight.  if not, it won't dammage anything before I get back.
> 
>> 



You have 2” pipe that you’re running for irrigation? That is serious irrigation! I’ve got 3/4” pipe in the ground here. I can see plenty of 2” irrigation valves on amazon for 80 to 100 bucks. If you only needed 1” then the price drops to 15 bucks, or under 20 for the better brands. If you’re really irrigating a farm then you probably need that much flow, but if you can just run them a little longer then a couple of adaptors down from 2” to the 1” valve and then back to 2” would probably work and be drastically cheaper… You could try one and see if you still get enough flow or not, there may be some places you just can’t get by with that, but any smaller area certainly would.

After scrolling down the list a bit I see some 2” 24v solenoid values even in brass for $63 I see some 1 1/2” for around the same price. If I was faced with paying over a hundred bucks a valve I might decide that those areas that really needed the extra flow were worth the extra work to put 2 1” valves for $15 each in parallel.  There are also electric ball valve actuators that can be installed on a regular ball valve to control it. The only ones I see on Amazon are either ludicrously more expensive or look too cheap to be used reliably in the ground. There might be some other things you can find like that from other places though.

I have code for an arduino that has the ability to have a maximum timeout when running relays, so if you wanted to go that route then the possible stick on time would not be that big a deal. 

The wgldesigns folks have a very good rs485 connected version of their “rain-8” device here http://www.wgldesigns.com/rain8pc.html I’ve started several times to write a plugin for that for XTension and it remains half finished. If I had some people who actually wanted to use that device I would go ahead and complete it. The only downside would be the physical serial connection to the XTension mac. That could be changed to a Wiznet card on ethernet and an RS485 adaptor for not much more money, or even to wifi via another adaptor. Let me know if you need the wifi one and I’ll look up the right stuff.


Thanks,
 James


James Sentman                       http://www.PlanetaryGear.org		http://MacHomeAutomation.com




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