Holman garden sprinkler timers

[Suzy]

There was a thread a few months(?) ago about these. I bought and installed
mine then. Came back after the break to find that water had got into the
battery compartment, corroded the battery terminal away and as a result the
sprinkler had been on for goodness knows how many hours! (it goes on
failsafe I believe). Anyone else had this problem?

 

[David L. Jones]

On Dec 28, 10:14 am, "Suzy" <not@valid> wrote:

There was a thread a few months(?) ago about these. I bought and installed
mine then. Came back after the break to find that water had got into the
battery compartment, corroded the battery terminal away and as a result the
sprinkler had been on for goodness knows how many hours! (it goes on
failsafe I believe). Anyone else had this problem?

I have not had that problem, although have not checked that battery
compartment recently. But I did have a problem where a lot of my tank
water was drained for some unknown reason. The only device hooked up
to it was a Holman timer and my garden drip system. I know how much
water the drip system uses per hour, so the timer must have been on
for a LONG time to drain half the tank, like orders of magnitude
longer than the programmed interval. I could find nothing wrong with
the programming, but went through and reset each program anyway. Has
not happened since.

I heard back from the Holman MD about the firmware problem I had, and
he said he'd replace my units when the new model was available. I have
not heard back about that.

If you like I can give you the direct email of the Holman MD, if so
send me an email off-list.

Dave.

 

[Russ]

David L. Jones wrote:

On Dec 28, 10:14 am, "Suzy" <not@valid> wrote:
There was a thread a few months(?) ago about these. I bought and
installed mine then. Came back after the break to find that water
had got into the battery compartment, corroded the battery terminal
away and as a result the sprinkler had been on for goodness knows
how many hours! (it goes on failsafe I believe). Anyone else had
this problem?

I have not had that problem, although have not checked that battery
compartment recently. But I did have a problem where a lot of my tank
water was drained for some unknown reason. The only device hooked up
to it was a Holman timer and my garden drip system. I know how much
water the drip system uses per hour, so the timer must have been on
for a LONG time to drain half the tank, like orders of magnitude
longer than the programmed interval. I could find nothing wrong with
the programming, but went through and reset each program anyway. Has
not happened since.

I heard back from the Holman MD about the firmware problem I had, and
he said he'd replace my units when the new model was available. I have
not heard back about that.

If you like I can give you the direct email of the Holman MD, if so
send me an email off-list.

About 6 weeks ago I installed a Holman 2-dial timer (no LCD display) at a
site which uses gravity-fed water from a number of fairly big tanks (about
180kL in total) it waters about 400 plants along part of a driveway - it
seems to be working fine so far (none are dead), but I did notice when
mucking around with the unit that the ball valve doesn't always open exactly
90 degrees, and I wonder if maybe it doesn't always close exactly, and
whether that might lead to some leakage.

It's also reliant on the supply pressure to keep it closed - if the back
pressure exceeeds the supply pressure, it will leak water, which leads me to
wonder whether at very low supply pressure, it might also leak water. That
said, I can't imagine it could be a significant amount.