Pump monitoring for farm irrigation

Pump monitoring on a farm is knowing whether the pump that feeds a set is running, whether it is moving water, and whether it will stop if nobody is watching. RowCodes shows that pump next to the valves on its mainline. The run limit belongs in the hardware at the pump house.

What you can do from the phone

Start and stop the pumps the controller is wired to. See whether a pump is running before you open a valve that depends on it. Sequence zones so they share the pump instead of stacking sets the mainline cannot carry. The confirm sheet on a valve tells you how the pump that feeds it fits in, so you are not opening a set against a pump that is off, or starting a second set the mainline cannot feed.

The pump house can also include fertilizer injectors, a mainline meter, and wired valves on the same controller. Injectors stop with an emergency stop when the controller can reach them, and they also stop at the controller’s own run limit. Closing a valve and stopping a pump are the safe direction. The screen never disables Stop.

Three facts that are not the same

The controller can say the pump output is on or off. That is a command and a status, not a flow. A meter says whether water is moving. The only no-flow alert is a wired valve with a zone meter, open 5 minutes or more with no flow — not a guess at a flow rate the meter did not read.

The third fact is the dead-man timer in the hardware at the pump house. That timer stops the pump when its run time is up, even with the link down. It does not wait for the phone to send another command. Emergency stop reaches every pump it can. A pump out of contact still has its own run limit. Anything the stop cannot reach is stopped by that limit, or by a person at the panel.

Meters on the well and the mainline

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. Where a meter is on the well or the mainline, pumped water is logged and can be looked up with that source. A well total and a mainline total answer different questions. Do not add a district delivery into the well’s number and call the sum groundwater.

Pressure, when a sensor is there, tells you whether the set came up. Low pressure with the pump “on” is a reason to look at the set, the filter, or a valve that did not open. It is not a volume. The monitoring guide is how to monitor irrigation water use.

Wiring, drives, and what is confirmed on site

Which terminal in the panel is the pump is confirmed on site with a meter, with the electrician and the installer. The product does not assume a relay map. An alert does not replace Stop. Emergency stop is the only red control. It blocks starts. It does not block Close or Stop.

Where the installer has wired a variable-speed drive, the controller can adjust the drive to hold a pressure or level. The site survey confirms the drive model. Start, stop, status, and the dead-man timer are the control around that drive. The product page is irrigation pump automation.

Most valley sets are not one valve and one pump in a private shed. Several zones share a well, and the mainline has a limit. A sequence runs those zones in an order you write so they do not open together. The phone shows the pump beside the valves on that mainline, which is how a foreman sees that the set they are about to open is the set the pump is actually feeding.

A manual open offers 15 min, 30 min, 1 h or 2 h. A schedule runs the minutes you set. The pump’s own run limit is the hardware timer at the pump house, separate from the valve’s auto-close. If you stop the pump, the valves that were open still need to close. Close stays available, and each valve still shuts on its own clock if the link drops. Starting a pump against closed valves, or opening every zone on a pump that is off, is the failure the confirm sheet is there to show before you send the command.

Questions

Will the screen tell me which relay is the pump?

Wiring is confirmed on site. The product does not assume a relay map that has not been metered. Stop stays available either way.

Does a lost connection leave the pump running?

The dead-man timer in the pump-house hardware stops the pump when its run time is up, even with the link down. Emergency stop reaches every pump the controller can still talk to. A pump out of contact still has its own run limit.

RowCodes runs the set from the phone

RowCodes starts and stops the pumps the controller is wired to, shows them next to the valves they feed, and stops a pump on its hardware timer when its run time is up, even with the link down. Log in to see a pump house you already run. Installers sign in on their own login.