Thank you Mike and D4C for your insight. I just looked through my spam folder and found there were replies to my previous posts.
D4C your setup sounds like a lot like what I ultimately have envisioned. Just larger. Our HOA is around 36 acres. I think your comments will be very helpful in convincing the rest of the board that Open Sprinkler is a workable solution. I like your watering increment solution. We have rivers of water going down the drain currently.
It’s interesting that you’re not a fan of master valves. I would have thought being able to turn off the main inlet and essentially depressurize the system while not watering (at least 12 hours a day) would save a significant amount of water being lost via small pipe or valve leaks. Is this something you would advise against given your experience?
I was also hoping the OS weather based adjustment was going to be effective although it’s good to know it isn’t there yet before implementing the system.
As it happens I’m also in the process of installing security cameras on our front gate as well as a mesh wifi network. If this goes well, we’ll likely add more cameras to cover the rest community. I hadn’t thought of controlling our street lights but that sounds like a good use of the hardware.
Update for where we are now:
I’ve been getting pushback from our current landscaping company, who is saying that they won’t install the OS system because they don’t think it is a “commercial solution”. I’ve asked for a more specific reason although it sounds like our main point of contact lives in the same community as one of the owners of Hunter and won’t consider doing anything else, even if it would be a more capable and less costly option. I don’t think it would be a problem to find another company to do the install but the rest of the board would prefer if our landscaping company did it so they are familiar with how everything works.
That being the case I started requesting proposals from other landscaping companies for the HOA landscaping contract. I plan to also request an installation quote for an OS system to coincide with taking on our landscaping work.
I’ve rethought the design of the system in order to make it easier to manage and require fewer parts. We have 4 POCs (point of connection, aka inlet pipe from city with seperate meter). Two potable and two reclaimed. Seeing as POC A currently has two independant controllers and POC B has three, there are multiple zones open at the same time on one POC. Seeing as this doesn’t appear to reduce water pressure below a usable level, I’m planning on combining zones so that POC A&B have fewer than 72 effective zones. Basically if there are two small turf zones, the plan is to combine them into one zone (parallel wires inside cabinet). Seems like if we’re able to find a good pair for each zone we currently have on POC A&B we’ll only need to control around 50 zones for POC A and around 60 zones for POC B.