Almond Irrigation Automation
Almond blocks in California are usually drip or microsprinkler, on long sets, with more than one valve sharing a well. RowCodes opens and closes those valves, runs the sequences you write, and keeps a metered record of the water when a meter is there.
How the blocks are usually built
A typical almond irrigation set is a zone or a group of zones on a schedule, not a ditch that someone changes with a shovel twice a day. Double-line drip and microsprinkler under the canopy are both common. The San Joaquin Valley holds a large share of the state’s almond acreage. The regional context is on the San Joaquin Valley page.
Hull split, salinity, and deficit strategies are agronomic decisions. UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (opens in a new tab) and your crop adviser or irrigator own that advice. Automation applies the schedule you chose. It does not choose the crop’s water stress, and it does not publish a kernel yield.
What the controller is doing
Sequences keep zones from opening together when they share a pump. A manual open offers 15 min, 30 min, 1 h or 2 h. A schedule runs the minutes you set. Each valve still auto-closes if the signal drops. Flow and pressure, if you have the sensors, show whether the set that started is the set that actually ran. A soil-moisture sensor can start a run when it reads below a level the farmer sets, on top of the clock schedule. It does not hold, skip, or interrupt a run.
Metered water is totaled as metered. A run with no meter but an entered flow rate is counted and labeled estimated, never shown as metered. Water with neither is “not measured,” left out, and never shown as zero. Water-year totals sit with the field because the season is long and the questions from a district or a GSA arrive after the fact. See irrigation water management and SGMA water monitoring.
Questions
Will this cut my almond water use by a set percent?
A number is published only when it was measured on that ranch. A schedule you already trust, applied on time, with a shut-off that still happens if the radio drops, is the claim.
Can one system cover drip and microsprinkler blocks?
Yes, as separate zones. They should not be forced onto one runtime if the application rates differ. The sequence is how you keep them on the same pump without opening them as one set.
Keep reading
RowCodes runs almond sets from the phone
RowCodes opens and closes the valves, starts and stops the pumps, and keeps metered water with the field. Log in to a farm you already run. Installers sign in on their own login.