Irrigation Valves
The irrigation valves in Hydria 8++ Touch are a lot more than simple relay outputs. Each irrigation valve is an individual component controlled by numerous parameters.
The following can be defined for each valve:
1. The maximum injection percentage of the nutrient and acid valves. This happens for safety reasons, but also for more reliable function in cases of high heterogeneity in the irrigation supply.
What does this mean in practice? It simply means that under no circumstances will the nutrient valves operate at full capacity, if we know for example in advance that this is not required for the given supply of the valve. This is therefore a parameter that we can include in the safety limits of the machine. This kind of safety limits is also particularly useful under conditions of very low supplies, in which it reassures that no fluctuation in the EC and pH values will occur.
2. Which pumps will be supporting each irrigation valve (one main and unlimited auxiliary pumps).
3. Which valves may be operating simultaneously. We may choose up to six additional valves that will be operating in conjunction.
4. The desired input EC value. If the installed irrigation system (any irrigation system can be supported by Hydria 8++ Touch) uses a triode valve for the management of irrigation water coming from two sources, e.g. groundwater-rainwater or groundwater with reverse osmosis, then we can choose our desired EC value per irrigation valve. For example, if valve No 3 corresponds to a crop sensitive to high salt concentration, then we set the irrigation EC to e.g. 0.6 mS/cm, whereas for valve No 6, which corresponds to a crop resistant to higher salt concentration, we set the irrigation EC to e.g. 1.2 mS/cm. This way we can save on high-quality irrigation water. It should also be highlighted that Hydria 8++ Touch handles each valve independently, even if a valve is part of a group of valves implicated in the same fertigation program. This way we can avoid any heterogeneity in the final values of EC and pH, when valves with differences in supply are used in the same irrigation program.