The Irrigation hub
Find your way around Irrigation — Tonight, Water, System, Upkeep and Setup — log last night's watering, set up watering schedules and track your water meters
On this page
The Irrigation hub is where you keep track of your water — how dry each surface is, what's been applied, what's left in the lake, and the pumps, pipes and heads that deliver it.
Where do I find it?
Click Irrigation in the top bar. It is its own place, straight after Course.
Its menu has five groups, and the same five sit across the top of every Irrigation page:
- Tonight — do we water tonight, where and how much. Log a run and see the programme.
- Water — Runs applied, Moisture, Lake and Meters & licence.
- System — As-built (your live network) and Design (the Designer).
- Upkeep — All upkeep, Repairs, Pressure tests, Seasonal work and Faults.
- Setup — a checklist: Irrigated surfaces, Your system, Meters & licence and Import records.
Premium
Irrigation is part of Premium, except one thing: measured soil moisture is free (see Soil moisture). Every club can open Irrigation. On Core, pages that need Premium show a padlock in the menu and a Premium panel when you open them. See Core and Premium plans.
Starting from scratch?
Open Setup first. It walks you through the four things Tonight needs. See Setting up Irrigation.
Search manuals at the top right of the pages searches the manuals and documents you've filed against the system.
What's on the Tonight page?
The banner at the top answers the question in a sentence. If surfaces are set up but nothing has been logged, a warning chip says Model can't be trusted yet: no watering logged. A chip also shows how many repairs (or electrical faults) are open.
The water balance only takes off the watering you log. With none logged, every surface dries out on paper until it reaches its ceiling and sits there marked "critical". Tonight says so rather than treating that figure as advice.
Under the banner you'll find:
- Tonight's plan — one row per irrigated surface, with Why, Apply and Runs. The amounts are the model's figures (what yesterday took out, less its rain). They can't be changed or sent to your controller from here. The lake's storage sits under the table.
- Last night — which surfaces have a run logged, and which are Not logged.
- Is it dry? — your latest probe round first, and the model's view where there are no probes. All readings opens Moisture.
- Needs attention — open repairs, electrical faults, seasonal work and stations with no flow or run time, each with a link.
- Tonight, hour by hour — your watering programmes laid across the night, checked against your pump's capacity. It is the programme only: wind, ET and rain by the hour aren't read here.
- Schedules & runs — your watering programmes, further down the page.
How do I log last night's watering?
Click Log a run (or Log last night under Last night). For each surface pick:
- As usual — repeats that surface's last logged run
- Didn't run — saves nothing (the model already assumes no watering)
- Different — type the millimetres, or the minutes per station
The first time there's no "usual" yet (the choice reads Enter amount), so type each surface's amount once. After that it's a few taps each morning. You can also pick one of the three nights before if you missed some. If a night already has a run logged for a surface, it starts on Didn't run so you don't count it twice.
Minutes need a head rate
Minutes only turn into millimetres if the surface has a precipitation rate stored. Without one, type the millimetres too.
What's on the other pages?
Water has four views, switched along the top: Runs applied, Moisture, Lake and Meters & licence. See Runs applied, Soil moisture and Water storage.
System is As-built — your stations, heads, map, pumps and drawings — and Design, the Designer. See Stations, pumps and the course map and The Irrigation System Designer.
Upkeep holds repairs, faults, pressure tests and seasonal work. See Irrigation maintenance and repairs.
Setup is the one-off checklist. See Setting up Irrigation.
A dash is not a zero
If a figure shows –, TurfWise has no data for it yet. That's different from 0 mm.
How do I set up a watering schedule?
Open Irrigation › Tonight and scroll down to Schedules & runs. This is where you record your watering programmes.
TurfWise doesn't run your controller
Schedules and runs are records in TurfWise. They don't connect to your irrigation controller, so they won't turn any valves on or off. Always start and stop water at the controller itself.
Click New Schedule
The Create a Schedule form opens.
Fill in the programme
Give it a Name (for example "Greens overnight") and pick the System. Set the Start time, Start date and Duration (minutes).
Choose the days and stations
Tick the days under Repeat on — leave them all empty to run once. Then tick the stations in the programme.
Add a rain hold if you want one
Rain hold threshold (mm) and Rain hold window (hours) are optional. If enough rain has fallen in that window, the run is recorded as held.
Save
Click Create Schedule. It appears in the Schedules list.
Further down the page you'll find:
- Pump concurrency — click Check how many at once and TurfWise works out how many stations your pumps can run together.
- A rain banner — Rain skip active or Clear to irrigate.
- Run history — each run, marked as recorded or as programmed and not confirmed. Mark run ended appears only on a run that is genuinely still open.
To log water you applied by hand, use Log a run on Tonight. It's the same form, and it counts towards the water balance.
Pausing and deleting
A schedule card has Pause and Resume buttons, and a delete button that asks you to confirm. Pausing here only stops TurfWise recording the programme. Pause it on your controller too.
How do I track water meters and my abstraction licence?
Open Irrigation › Water › Meters & licence (you can also reach it from Setup › Meters & licence). It has two parts.
Abstraction licences
Click Add Licence and enter a Name, the Source (Borehole, Surface water, Mains or Other), the Annual limit (m³) and the date your Licence year starts. You can tick which meters count towards it — tick none and every meter counts.
Each licence shows a gauge of how much you've used against the limit. It turns amber at 75% and red above 95%, or when TurfWise projects you'll go over. A line underneath tells you when you're on course to hit the limit.
Water meters
Click Add Meter to set one up, with its Meter type, serial number and system. Then use Add Reading to log the Reading (litres) and when it was read, and click Save Reading.