Schedules
Main page: Configuration
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Recurring schedules let you irrigate your zones automatically on a repeating cadence — no Home Assistant automations needed. They live at the bottom of the Setup → When to Water tab.
Weather updates and duration calculations run on their own automatic times set in When to Water — schedules here are about when to actually water.
Creating a schedule
Click Add Schedule to open the schedule dialog. Fill in the following fields:
Name
A descriptive name for the schedule, e.g. "Daily morning irrigation".
Schedule type
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Daily | Runs every day at a specified time |
| Weekly | Runs on selected days of the week at a specified time |
| Monthly | Runs on a specific day of the month at a specified time |
| Every N hours | Runs at a fixed interval (e.g. every 6 hours) |
| Sunrise | Runs at sunrise (with an optional offset in minutes) |
| Sunset | Runs at sunset (with an optional offset in minutes) |
| Solar azimuth | Runs when the sun reaches a given compass angle (0–359°), with an optional offset — e.g. fire when the sun is due east |
Time (HH:MM)
For daily, weekly, and monthly schedules, specify the time of day to run (24-hour format).
Days of week (weekly only)
Select one or more days of the week the schedule should fire.
Day of month (monthly only)
The day of the month (1–31) the schedule should fire.
Interval (interval type only)
The number of hours between runs.
You can optionally set a Start time (HH:MM). With it, the interval is anchored to that clock time — it fires at the start time and every N hours after (e.g. start 07:00, every 12 hours → 07:00 and 19:00 each day), and the dashboard shows the real next run. Leave it empty to keep the legacy behaviour, where the interval simply runs every N hours counting from when Home Assistant last started (no fixed clock phase, and the dashboard can't show a next run).
Note: an interval-irrigate schedule waters the deficit the daily calculation produced. Because the calculation runs once a day, a second run a few hours later normally finds the bucket already satisfied and does little. To genuinely water more than once a day on intra-day demand, also enable the live-estimate option (see Experimental).
Offset (sun-based types only)
Minutes to shift the run relative to the solar event — negative for before, positive for after (e.g. -30 = half an hour before sunrise).
Start or finish at that time? {#time-anchor}
For every type except interval you can choose what the configured time means:
- Start (default for clock-based types) — the run begins at the target time.
- Finish — the integration starts early enough that watering ends at the target time, using the current estimated total duration. Combined with the Sunrise type this gives the classic lawn-watering pattern: finish watering right at sunrise, when evaporation loss is lowest and the grass dries during the day.
What a schedule does
When a schedule fires it irrigates: it controls all linked entities for the targeted zones that have a calculated duration > 0, and also fires the smart_irrigation_start_irrigation_all_zones event for any automation-based setups.
Zones
Choose All zones or select specific zones by name. Only zones with a linked entity and a calculated duration > 0 will actually open their valve.
Enabled
Toggle a schedule on or off without deleting it. Disabled schedules are not tracked.
Start date / End date (optional)
Limit the schedule to a date range. Leave empty for no restriction.
Managing schedules
Each existing schedule is shown as a card with a summary of its settings. Use the Edit button to modify it or Delete to remove it.
Tips
- Make sure your automatic calculation time runs before your irrigate schedule, so each zone has an up-to-date duration when the schedule fires. The default calculation time (23:00) pairs naturally with a Sunrise + finish schedule the next morning.
- For seasonal use, set a start date and end date so schedules only fire during your irrigation season.
- To adapt irrigation intensity over the year, adjust each zone's multiplier under Setup → My Zones (the old Seasonal Adjustments tab was removed in favor of this simpler approach).
Main page: Configuration
Previous: When to Water
Next: Module configuration