ᐅ Automated nighttime irrigation – does anyone do this?

Hello,

Currently, it is quite dry everywhere, which has made the lawn here look like straw. I have heard that some people now use a timer to water their lawn at night, for example at 2 a.m., resulting in a beautifully green lawn.

Does anyone have experience with this? What exactly is needed for it?
So far, I only have a hose splitter with two outlets connected to my outdoor water tap, each running a polyethylene (PE) pipe with pop-up sprinklers. Until now, I have had to manually turn on the outdoor tap in the late afternoon and open the valve on the splitter for the desired PE pipe. Of course, this can be quite inconvenient and inefficient in the long run.

Typically, an irrigation controller of your choice is used. They all support simple time-based control. Alternatively, you can use solenoid valves for the water supply, which you then control with any existing system in your house—even integration with KNX is almost always possible.

We have the same solution as you and are switching to automatic mode this week. The reason is that we were recently advised to water in the morning so that the lawn can dry properly afterwards. Watering late in the evening had sometimes caused damage to the plants. Since we don’t want or can’t go into the garden at 5 or 6 a.m., we are now installing an irrigation controller. We have a Gardena system with a buried box where the different pipes connect and water several areas using pop-up sprinklers. The controller can now be retrofitted so the sprinklers start at the desired time.

Therefore, my recommendation is to set the program for the early morning hours.

Alternatively, consider that Germany is increasingly facing water shortage situations, and maybe we shouldn’t be using tens of cubic meters per year to water green but ecologically almost worthless lawns...

That's true, perfectly manicured lawns are understandably considered "out" nowadays. However, you don't need to water the lawn constantly. Even our clover-moss-weed lawn requires a certain amount of water. Having an irrigation control system is helpful, especially to water at times when you're usually asleep.

The herb lawn itself hardly needs watering. Watering every two weeks is enough, and if it stays damp until the next morning, it’s not a big problem. I think you’ve just been watering too much.