Sprinkler Timer Guides

Pick your controller

Every Monday morning, Waves lawn customers get a watering plan for the week: how many minutes to run each zone, and whether to skip because of rain. Your county sets the day. These guides show you how to make that happen on the timer on your wall, in plain steps, for your own box.

Open the little box in your garage or on the side of the house and look for the brand name printed on the front. Then pick it here.

• Rain Bird — ESP-TM2, ESP-Me and ESP-Me3, ESP-RZXe, and older ESP models
• Hunter — X-Core, X2, Pro-C, and Hydrawise (touchscreen or app)
• Orbit B-hyve — the app-first indoor and outdoor timers
• Rachio — Rachio 3 and 3e, app only
• Not sure, or another brand? — where the name is printed, and how to text us a photo

The easiest way: run it by hand

For manual watering, follow the minutes and day or days in your plan, within current local restrictions:

1. Use OFF between runs only when every zone is manual. OFF disables all zones. If beds or drip need their own automatic schedules, preserve those schedules and follow the model guide’s AUTO/RUN instructions.
2. Run the grass zones on the permitted days in your plan. Use the turf minutes from Monday’s email only for those grass zones. Give bed and drip zones their own appropriate durations; do not apply the turf runtime to every zone. Each brand guide shows the controls. When the selected zones finish, return to OFF only if every zone is manual; otherwise keep the required non-lawn schedules active.
3. When the plan says to skip lawn watering, skip that lawn run. If other zones still need water, preserve their separate schedules.

One rule that matters: a hand run counts the same as a scheduled one. Press it only on your assigned day and inside your county’s allowed hours. Those rules change with the season and with water-shortage orders, so Monday’s email always carries the current one. If your county’s allowed hours are overnight, a programmed schedule is easier than an alarm clock; every brand guide has a short section on that at the end.

When the sprinklers will not run

Waves does not repair irrigation. If a zone will not come on, a head is broken, or the box shows a fault, text us a photo at (941) 297-5749 and we will point you to an irrigation contractor we trust. We can still tell you what to water and when; the repair belongs with them.