Water your lawn without getting out of bed....
Written: Aug 31 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Straighforward, fairly flexible programming
Cons: Can remember only one schedule
The Bottom Line: If you're happy with the feature set, buy it. It does what it needs to, with little fuss.
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| rumpel2's Full Review: Melnor 3015 Water Timer |
Do watering restrictions make it hard to keep your lawn watered during the summer? Or do you prefer to water your lawn when it does the most good?
Vancouver may be on the Wet Coast of Canada, but the summer rainfall isn't distributed evenly enough to keep lawns green. Even stranger, Vancouver and Victoria have watering restrictions from June to September that allow a lawn to be watered by unattended hose attachments on only two days a week, and then only in the early morning or late evening. Miss those opportunities, and you either do without, or risk having your neighbours rat on you. And they will -- the alternative could mean more severe water rationing.
Water timers attach to the hose faucet, and control the water that goes to whatever is at the end of the hose attached to the timer. The electronic ones are battery-operated. The mechanical timers either use a spring-powered clock mechanism, or are driven by the water flowing through the timer. Generally speaking, the mechanical timers will shut the water off, but you'll have to be there to turn it on.
An electronic water timer on the watering hose makes life a lot easier. Set up the sprinkler, and let the timer turn the water on and off again at the time of your choosing. While you're sleeping, or away for the evening. Whatever.
Even if you don't have to deal with watering restrictions, the best time to water a lawn is just before sunrise. Maybe twice as much of the water goes into the soil instead of the sky. But that means getting out of bed if you don't have an electronic water timer.
I had been using Melnor's Model 3000 electronic water timer (very similar in appearance and features to the current Model 3020) for nearly 5 years when the valve shaft seal failed and let water into the electronics. (The Melnor electronic water timers all have a 2-year warranty.) Fortunately, the failure happened as the valve closed, so it didn't leave the sprinkler on. Home Depot no longer carries either the 3000 or the 3020, so I came home with Melnor's Model 3015, which is billed as being easier to set. True, but it's a bit of a mixed blessing. More about that later. In the meanwhile, you can look at the various models at http://www.melnor.com/products/timers.asp.
In the Model 3000, a pair of alkaline AA batteries would easily last the season (given my use of it) even though they also powered a motor that opened and closed the ball valve that controls the water. The Model 3105 uses a standard 9v alkaline battery. Unless it takes a lot of current to operate the valve, I'd guess that it will last several seasons. But the battery should be removed anyway during the winter when the timer isn't in use. Batteries don't leak as often as they used to, but if it happens, you'll probably end up junking the timer.
Neither the 3000 or the 3015 have program options that will deal with watering days that alternate between 3, then 4 days apart. I'd bet that the 3020 won't either. For water timers that can deal with that, you're looking at timers in the CDN$50 bracket because you'll probably need a separate program for each permitted watering session -- that's four per week in Vancouver -- to water at the best available times. The 3000 and the 3020 can handle two programs; the 3015 can remember only one. The 3015 cost me CDN$36 at Home Depot, which was not much more than what I paid for the Model 3000 in August of 1999. I'm cheap enough that I'm prepared to re-program the timer for every setup, so programming the timer needs to be fast and simple. The Model 3015 is OK that way, though it's mildly annoying that you have to tell it what the current time is every time you re-program the timer.
While the Model 3000's programming was less intuitive, it was not hard to get used to once you got your head around the fact that it uses an interval timer, not a clock timer. You tell it how long from now (the moment you're doing the programming) that you want it to turn on, how long to remain on, and how many days should pass before it turns on again. Best of all, if you made a mistake, you only had to press the "Reset" button and start again. The Model 3020 is probably much the same. The Model 3015 has no reset button -- if you blow it, you just keep going through all five program steps till you get back to the beginning so you can start again. But it is more intuitive, so errors are less likely. The use of colour-coding for the various settings is very helpful in this regard, but the downside is that you can't set it in poor light conditions without some help from a flashlight or something. If you know where each of the appropriate buttons is on the 3000 or the 3020, you could set it in absolute darkness.
The 3015 uses a clock timer. You set its clock, then tell it what time to turn on, how long to stay on, and how often to repeat that cycle. In case it matters: the clock and turn-on times cannot be set to a finer interval than 1 hour. You don't get precision timing here. But the 3015 offers a much more flexible range of cycle times than the 3000 -- it can turn itself on every 8, 12, 24, 48, or 72 hours or once a week. It will stay on between 1 and 180 minutes when it does come on. However, being able to set it for 1, 3, 5, 7, or 10 minutes at the bottom end of the scale seems kind of silly to me given that it can't repeat that short squirt in less than 8 hours. And the permissible duration increments get very large (30 minutes) at the top end of the scale. I prefer the approach used by the Model 3000 (and presumably the Model 3020), which allow sprinkling duration to be increased in 15-minute increments throughout the duration range up to a total of 4 hours.
Both the Model 3000 and the 3015 allow the timer to be taken out of the circuit so that the hose can be used on demand without erasing whatever programming you have set up. The Model 3000's valve could be left open as long as you wanted. But the 3015 will automatically close its valve after 30 minutes whether you want it to or not. That certainly can be an advantage, but my preference is to leave the timer valve open and the tap closed when the timer isn't waiting to do a watering job.
Here's why I like to operate that way. The faucet is less likely to fail under constant water pressure than the timer body or valve, and it makes life a lot simpler for anyone else who may want to use the tap and doesn't want to have to figure out how to deal with the timer. Otherwise, you may come home one day and find the timer (and its attached hose) lying on the ground just because somebody wanted a drink of water. Or the timer body cracked or broken and gushing water because somebody pulled too hard on the hose. (To minimize that possibility, it's a really good idea to install one of those 6" flexible extensions between the faucet and the timer. See Melnor's "kink-free hose saver" at http://www.melnor.com/products/other_accessories.asp for an example.)
The Model 3000 was well sealed. Both the electronics chamber and the battery chamber were gasketed -- even around the screws that held the battery compartment lid closed. Not so on the Model 3015. I have yet to find out how easily water can get into its battery compartment, which is closed with three screws. I suspect that it could happen quite easily -- but to be fair, the cover does fit tightly. Bring your #2 Phillips screwdriver when you want to change batteries.
Both the 3015 and the 3020 are supposed to work with low pressure drip and soaker hoses. I used the 3000 with a soaker hose occasionally; it performed as expected. So far as I can tell, any of these timers will work with any flow rate or watering pressure your faucet can be set to deliver. That may not be true of timers that use water flow to drive the timer.
The Model 3000 included a battery-level monitor circuit that would not allow the unit to open the valve if it didn't think there would be enough juice left to close the valve at the end of the cycle. It would also close the valve if it was open when the low-battery warning came up. Either way, it means that you're not likely to end up with an overwatered (or flooded) lawn because of a run-down battery. The Model 3000 also wouldn't accept programming instructions when the battery was low, so you had lots of warning that battery replacement was needed. The Model 3015 provides a visual low-battery warning and won't accept programming when the battery alarm is active, but the manual is silent as to how that model will behave if it detects a low battery after it has been programmed or during a sprinkling cycle.
The manuals for both the 3000 and the 3015 are very clear about NOT using rechargeable batteries, and that only alkaline batteries should be used. Rechargeables have different discharge characteristics than alkalines; I'd guess that there is a significant risk with rechargeables that the low-battery monitor circuit may not kick in soon enough to be sure there is sufficient energy left in a rechargeable battery to close the timer's valve when called for. In other words: use the wrong battery type only if you're prepared to deal with whatever may happen when your sprinkler doesn't shut off when you intended it to.
The Model 3000 used a nylon ball valve to control the water flow. It took the valve motor about 5 seconds to close that valve because of the very high ratio in the gear train between the motor and the valve. So water hammer was not an issue. The valve worked well and never leaked -- until the lubrication on the O-ring valve shaft seals dried up and let water into the electronics chamber. (How do I know that? I opened the body of the timer and let the electronics dry out, then took the drive gear off the valve stem, and relubricated the O-rings with plumber's grease. To Melnor's credit, the electronics and the motor still worked, and the valve body held the pressure without further leakage past the valve shaft seals.)
The 3015 seems to use what looks like a poppet valve, which is supposed to close slowly to avoid water hammer in the pipes that supply the faucet. The 3015 I have tends to squeal when the valve is closing under pressure, so I find myself wondering what the effect will be if your piping is subject to water hammer. (Fortunately, my plumbing doesn't have that problem.) However, I suspect that the 3015's valve system takes far less out of the battery to open and close the valve. I was not able to see enough of the valve assembly to evaluate the likelihood that it might spring a leak somewhere, but I suspect that the valve mechanism restricts the water flow somewhat more than the Model 3000's ball valve, which imposed very little restriction on the water flow when fully open.
All in all, the 3015 seems like a good product, and Melnor delivers quite reasonable quality at an acceptable price. I look forward to staying in bed on Thursday and Sunday mornings while my lawn is being watered. But there are some irritations with the 3015. Some of those may be quite personal. Feature sets in water timers vary widely, so check around. If the 3015's feature set doesn't work well for you, there may be another that fits your needs better.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
rumpel2
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Member: Rob M.
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Reviews written: 8
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
Eclectic public servant into choral music, computers and DIY.
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