Baseline Systems BaseStation 1000 - Manual (Page 17)

BaseStation 1000 Irrigation Controller Manual
The BaseStation 1000 has built-in support for soak cycling and has intelligent watering algorithms
that apply cycles in the optimal order to maximize water penetration and minimize evaporation
loss.
As a rule-of-thumb, Baseline recommends that you break the total run time for any zone into at
least 3 cycles, and configure the soak time between cycles to be at least twice the length of the
cycle time.
Note: One easy way to determine good cycle times is to turn a zone on and watch for first signs of
standing water or runoff. Set the cycle time to be no more than this amount of time.
Properly setting soak and cycle times will dramatically improve water penetration and watering
efficiency.
Intelligent Soak Cycles™
In addition to traditional soak cycling, Baseline’s controllers allow you to enable Intelligent Soak
Cycles for a program. As in traditional soak cycling, the Intelligent Soak Cycle breaks the total
runtime into periods of watering interspersed with periods of soak times; however, Intelligent Soak
Cycles prioritize runtimes for zones that have already started to water over zones that have not
started in order to maximize watering efficiency and minimize total irrigation time.
When you have many zones in a program, traditional soak cycles will ignore soak time settings
while the program waters each zone for the allotted time. For example, a program has 10 zones.
The runtime is 30 minutes with 3 soak cycles. You set the soak time for 20 minutes. The first zone
waters for 10 minutes and then each successive zone waters for 10 minutes. By the time all 10
zones have watered, zone 1 will have been soaking for approximately 100 minutes. When
Intelligent Soak Cycles are enabled, the controller checks after each zone has run to determine
whether any previous zones are done soaking. If a soak time is finished, the controller waters the
previous zone again.
Using Soak Cycles with Soil Moisture Sensors
When you are using a soil moisture sensor to start or stop programs, you need to understand how
the soak cycle settings will affect your system.
• If you set a program to start when the soil moisture sensor reading is less than the limit, you
should set up at least 3 soak cycles with a soak time that is at least twice as long as the cycle
time, and enable Intelligent Soak Cycles.
• If you set a program to stop when the soil moisture sensor reading is greater than the limit,
you should set up at least 3 soak cycles, but DO NOT enable Intelligent Soak Cycles because
this setting could cause the program to stop before all zones have finished watering.
• If you want to maintain moisture within a narrow range, DO NOT use soak cycles.
• If you want to maintain moisture within a broader range, you should set up at least 3 soak
cycles, but DO NOT enable Intelligent Soak Cycles.
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