How to monitor irrigation water use

Monitoring irrigation water use means tying a reading to a place you can name: a well, a mainline, a field, a valve. RowCodes keeps that reading with the field it belongs to, and it keeps three kinds of water distinct so a later question can still be answered.

Three kinds of water, kept apart

Metered water is totaled as metered. A run with no meter but an entered flow rate is counted and labeled estimated, and it is never shown as metered. Water with neither is “not measured,” left out of the totals, and never shown as zero. Rain is not pumped water. A soil probe is not a meter. Crop-health imagery is a satellite look at the canopy, not a record of extraction.

The chain on a farm is well or district turnout, pump, mainline, field, zone, valve, and the acres that set actually watered. A single farm-wide average hides which of those failed. A mainline meter says what left the pump house. A valve with a flow reading says whether that valve’s set moved water. Pressure says whether the set came up to the range the system was built for. You can have normal pressure and a broken meter, or flow with pressure too low to operate the emitters. Keep both readings. Do not turn a pressure number into acre-feet and file it as metered.

Where the meter sits

A totalizing meter on a well, read with that well’s name, is the clear record of what that well pumped. If several wells share one meter, the total is the group’s, and the record should say so. If the meter was down, the gap stays in the record. A meter at the mainline is a different fact from a meter at the well: one is what left the pump house, the other is what the well produced. District water is a delivery you log, not groundwater, even when both irrigated the same field.

An entered flow rate is for a run that has no meter and does have a rate someone typed in. It is counted, and the label is estimated. It is never rolled into the metered total. Nothing in the product invents a flow the farm did not enter and a meter did not read.

Telemetry is the reading, on a clock

Irrigation telemetry is the readings coming back from the field on their own: flow, pressure, pump status, soil moisture, tank level, and whether the field hub is online. The useful part is that each reading is attached to a device and a time, so last Tuesday is still there when someone asks. A dashboard that only shows the current minute cannot answer a water-year question.

Alerts are part of the same path. A wired valve with a zone meter, open 5 minutes or more with no flow, a field hub offline, a tank low: the note names what to check. An alert is not a substitute for Stop, and it is not an emergency stop. Stopping water is still Close or Stop, which stay available.

Pressure, pumps, and what a reading cannot prove

Pressure that never comes up can mean the pump did not start, a valve on the mainline is shut, or too many zones opened at once. Pressure that spikes can mean a closed downstream valve or a filter. The reading is a clue. Someone still walks it down. Sequencing zones so they share one pump is how you avoid stacking sets the mainline cannot carry.

Pump status, a flow reading, and the dead-man timer are three different facts. The controller can say the pump output is on. A meter says whether water is moving. The dead-man timer in the pump-house hardware stops the pump when its run time is up, even with the link down. Which terminal in the panel is the pump is confirmed on site. The product does not assume a relay map that has not been metered. The monitoring page is agricultural water monitoring, and the pump page is irrigation pump automation.

Questions

Can I monitor a well that has no meter?

You can still control the pump and see whether it is running. The water total for that well stays “not measured” and is left out of the sums. If you enter a flow rate for a run, that run is counted and labeled estimated.

Is crop health the same as a water reading?

Satellite crop health is a separate view of the canopy, labeled as an estimate from a satellite pass. It is not a flow reading and not a soil probe.

RowCodes runs the set from the phone

RowCodes keeps metered water as metered, labels an entered flow rate as estimated, and leaves everything else as not measured. Log in to read a farm’s water year. Installers sign in on their own login.