How ZoneFlow decides

Each zone runs two cadences: an infrequent deep soak (for deep roots) and a lighter, frequent routine irrigation. A completed deep soak also counts as the routine watering, so the routine interval restarts from it.

Every run, scheduled or manual, goes through the same pipeline.

1. Plant and site

Crop, soil type, drainage, slope and irrigation method. These are descriptive and guide the recommended numbers. You can also add an optional growth-stage ramp from a planting date. See Growth ramp and climate.

2. Demand: how much water, how often

• Temperature tiers (cool, normal, hot) from the 3-day average of daily highs, with thresholds chosen for your climate at setup.
• Or, optionally, an ET curve: Hargreaves ET₀ from daily min and max temperature and your latitude, times 7, times a crop factor.
• Scaled by the growth ramp (young plants need less) and by optional deficit mode, a controlled stress after fruit set with guardrails.
• An optional soil-moisture probe decides at the extremes: dry soil brings watering forward and wet soil skips it.

3. Water already received

• Rolling rain windows from a tipping-bucket gauge.
• Rain credit deducted by efficiency band.
• A dry-down hold after significant rain.
• An optional weather forecast gate.
• A 30-minute pre-irrigation rain check that also stops a running cycle.

4. Physical delivery

• Runtime is calculated from your calibrated emitter flow rate.
• It is split into pulses with soak gaps, so clay soil can absorb the water.
• Optional pump pre and post delays.
• Serialized access to a shared pump. See Multiple zones and shared pumps.

5. Safety

Per-cycle and daily runtime caps, stuck-valve force-off, pump-power audit, no-flow detection, power-loss abort, stale-lock recovery, and interruption handling that always ends with the valve closed and confirmed.