System Overview and Flow-Clik Operation (continued)

Example of System Operation

In this illustrative example of a small commercial site, the Flow-Clik sensor is connected to the mainline pipe that provides water to the system control valves. Because it is installed immediately down stream of the master valve, it will provide the added protection of shutting down the irrigation system if a mainline break should occur.

The Flow-Clik can be set to automatically shut off the system whenever actual flow within the system exceeds the flow of the system’s highest flow zone. During installation of the Flow-Clik, a calibration procedure (see Calibrating the Flow-Clik) is used to set the Flow-Clik at a level of flow dictated by the highest flow zone. If the system flow exceeds the “calibrated” flow by a pre-determined amount, the Interface Box will signal an overflow condition is occurring.

The figure below shows an example of an application using the Flow-Clik sensor. In this example, the valve that commands the highest flow is valve number 4, which has a total flow rate of 18.9 gallons per minute (GPM). The user would turn this valve on and calibrate the Flow-Clik to this zone. If flow exceeds 18.9 gpm, a signal will be sent to the Interface Box which would communicate to the controller to interrupt the system for a prescribed period of time set by the interrupt delay position on the dial.

The system startup delay and interrupt period can be adjusted by moving the dials on the Flow-Clik Interface Box to the desired settings. The system startup delay allows for system stabilization to occur prior to the Flow-Clik sensing for an overflow condition. The startup delay can be adjusted from 0 to 300 seconds.

The interrupt period setting allows the user to program the Flow-Clik to shut the system off for a prescribed amount of time. The interrupt period can be adjusted by moving the dial to a specified setting from 5 to 60 minutes. There is also a Restart Manually position on the dial that shuts the system off until it is manually restarted at the Interface Box.

In the following example, the startup delay is set for 20 seconds and the interrupt period is set to 10 minutes.