timer question

[Paul]

Many timers have 15 minute intervals as the smallest programmable time interval. That would be WAY to long in my terr should I decide to put a misting system in. I've seen some that I think might have a minute as the smallest interval. What's the smallest interval timer folks have found?

[Marty]

This is probably the best timer available for a misting system:



Intervals as little as 5 seconds

[Tindomul]

Nice one!!! However I find that regular digital timers have 1 min intervals and I like to run my misters for 1 or 2 mins at a time.

[Shadow]

The timers I saw have 1 min interval.

[Ross]

I use the encore and find it very accurate and dependable.

[Marty]

Originally Posted by Tindomul1of9

Nice one!!! However I find that regular digital timers have 1 min intervals and I like to run my misters for 1 or 2 mins at a time.

Tindo remember that while the timer may work well for you now, it depends on the little watch batteries. When those watch batteries get drained, one of those days, your timer will turn the pump on and then it will be too weak to turn it off, leaving your pump running until it burns out. That's the reason that I don't use those timers any more....well actually I use them along with the repeat cycle timer to make day and night cycles.

[Shadow]

Originally Posted by Marty

Tindo remember that while the timer may work well for you now, it depends on the little watch batteries. When those watch batteries get drained, one of those days, your timer will turn the pump on and then it will be too weak to turn it off, leaving your pump running until it burns out. That's the reason that I don't use those timers any more....well actually I use them along with the repeat cycle timer to make day and night cycles.

I didn't think of this possibility. When you use digital timer with repeat cycle timer does it mean that if digital timer don't switch off the water will run for not longer than 12 hours?

[Tindomul]

As Marty knows too well, I recently set my timer wrong. I set it to turn on at 7:00 Am and to turn off at 6:01 AM. The Mister burned out. Now I never thought of Marty's scenario though. I should have learned my lesson.

[Paul]

Does the "Encore" also run on batteries?

What price range are we looking at with those?

One of the digital timers I had seen, if memory serves correctly, was built into a powerstrip. I wonder if said timer was battery powered? Doesn't seem that it would be.

[Marty]

No, Encore doesn't run on batteries, it is a repeat cycle timer. It basically repeats cycles every so often. It works like this: "turn on for x minutes every y minutes". The drawback is that you can't turn it off for the night as it always cycles through, so if you set it to turn on for 20 seconds every 4 hrs, it will do 24/7

The nifty trick with the repeat cycle timers is that if you have the "ON" cycle set to say 20 sec, the 1st time you apply power to the timer it will click on for 20 seconds, it will then stay off for the duration of OFF time. This makes the RCT a perfect tool to work in tandem with the regular digital timer, because you can now set the regular timer to turn for 1 minute at say at 7am, 11am, 2pm and 5 pm, whatever pm and every time the timer kicks in, the RCT will only stay on for 20 sec. This makes a powerful combination, because now you can control exactly when you want the timer to go on and for how long, plus, it's safe too, because If the digital timer would fail and wouldn't turn off, the RCT will only stay on for 20 sec, so no big deal there.