How to Set Your Sprinkler Timer—No Matter Which One You Have

Before actually setting your sprinkler timer, you need to know what to set it for. How often should you water your yard, and for how long each time?

Watering needs depend on the types of plants you’re watering, how established your landscaping is, and your local climate. For instance, a new lawn needs more water than a better-established one, and plants in cooler climates need less water than those in hot ones.

Properly programming your sprinkler timer requires understanding what your landscaping needs. A good starting point is 30 minutes, three times per week, but other local homeowners or garden aficionados may be able to help, as can researching your specific landscaping features online.

Although every sprinkler timer is a little different, there is some shared language that can help you find your way around any brand and model you have. Fortunately, we set up a helpful cheat sheet for the parts of a sprinkler system and its controls for you:

• Valves are the components of your sprinkler system that open or close to make watering happen at the right time. 

• Depending on your sprinkler timer, it may allow you to control individual valves, which it may also refer to as stations or zones. (If you have a very large property, zones may comprise multiple valves.) 

• A program is a pre-set script that tells your sprinkler when to run. For instance, you may set yours to run Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 8 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. 

• Start time refers to the specified time of day at which a program starts. 

• Run time refers to how long the watering goes on (for example, 20 minutes or 30 minutes). 

• Semi-auto features may allow you to run a pre-set program at a time other than its scheduled programming.

• The manual button allows you to control your sprinkler system—you guessed it—manually. This is useful when there’s rain in the forecast.

In order to ensure your sprinkler isn’t going off on an unexpected day or in the middle of the night (which definitely isn’t the best time to water grass), you’ll want to make sure you’re starting with the correct current time and date.

Again, the specifics will depend on your individual model, but you’ll likely navigate to a “Time and Date” category under your sprinkler’s settings and use the arrows or touchpad to make the correct selections.

While the specifics depend on your model, you’ll be able to choose specific dates, start times, and run times for the various valves or zones that your sprinkler timer controls. For example, maybe you decide zones one and two run on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 a.m. for 30 minutes but keep zones three and four off for your first program.

These days, most modern sprinkler timers allow you to create and store multiple programs, which can help you customize various watering schedules for different areas or zones or simply have a pre-set option for wetter or dryer seasons. Once you know how to create one program, you should have the tools you need to create others.

Next, you’ll use the same set of controls to create other programs. Many modern sprinkler timers use letters to name different programs: Program A, Program B, Program C, etc.

Using different programs and controlling individual valves or stations allows you to customize your irrigation system to get the right plants the right amount of water. This way, each plant gets exactly what it needs even if their needs differ from their neighbors'.

For example, along with your Program A above, which waters the lawn twice a week for 30 minutes, you might set up Program B to control the sprinklers from zones 3 and 4 in your flower beds. You could set these to run every other day from 7 a.m. to 7:10 a.m.

Here’s the thing about plants: They’re alive. Your sprinkler timer, on the other hand, is not. So, it may turn out that your landscaping requires varying watering times despite your wishes to keep to a set schedule.

Fortunately, most sprinkler timers include manual or semi-automatic modes that allow you to give thirsty zones a little more water than they might otherwise get on a Tuesday. And, of course, when the seasons change and the weather gets wetter or dryer, you’ll need to reset your programs. You may also find that you need to reprogram if you’ve underestimated or overestimated your plants’ watering needs.

Every sprinkler timer is a little different. Even if you understand what all the basic features and controls mean, the way to navigate them might not be immediately obvious, which is exactly why they make owner’s manuals. If you’re simply not sure how to get your sprinkler system to follow your commands, it’s time to dig out the paperwork that came with it (or look for it online if it’s long gone).

And if you’re still a little lost at sea—or simply don’t want to deal with any of the above—consider reaching out to a sprinkler repair pro near you. They’ll be able to help you get your sprinkler system set up and ready to go in a jiffy. Better yet, they can even show you how they do it in real time so that you can create new programs of your own in the future.