Watering guard: no water arriving
When water runs but moisture never rises — protection against endless watering into nothing
There is one fault that neither leak detection nor sensor monitoring catches: the pump runs, the device dutifully counts milliliters — and nothing reaches the sensor anyway. The zone keeps reading "too dry" and keeps watering. Without a brake this goes on for days.
TYPICAL CAUSES
- The water distributor has slipped out of the pot — the water runs onto the floor.
- The pump no longer delivers (air in the suction line, kinked hose).
- The tank is genuinely empty although the display says full. The level is CALCULATED, not measured — once it is off, nothing else notices.
- The root ball has dried out completely and turned water-repellent: the water runs past it and straight through. Here more watering actually makes things worse.
THE WATERING GUARD halts a zone in exactly this case and reports it. It is switched on by default.
1Switching it on and off
The watering guard applies to the whole device and is switched on by default — it can only be switched off for all zones together, not per zone. Which zone actually gets protected is something the device decides by itself afterwards (see next step).
In the app
Settings → Safety → "Watering guard".
On the device
Settings → "Watering guard" button to the right of "Weather". Green with "On" = on.
2The device counts milliliters, not waterings
A single watering says nothing: 30 ml into a bed will not move a sensor, and rightly so.
So the HydroCommander keeps track of how much water has flowed since the last visible rise in moisture. If moisture rises, the count starts over. If it does not, the count keeps running — across several waterings.
Tip
That makes the protection work equally well in every mode, even when a thirsty zone gets a small sip every half hour.
3Every zone gets its own limit
A 6-liter pot may need 40 ml for a visible rise, a bed 800 ml. A fixed milliliter limit would be too strict for one and useless for the other.
So the device measures, at every observed rise, how much water THIS zone needed for it. At three times that amount you get a warning, at five times the stop. You do not have to enter anything.
4Why there are no false alarms
Three safeguards, and the first one matters most:
- ONLY ZONES THAT HAVE WORKED BEFORE. A zone is only armed after three observed rises. If a sensor sits at the far end of a bed and never sees any of the water, it will NEVER be stopped — instead it gets a note that the placement should be checked. In that case that is the right message anyway.
- THE RISE HAS TO HOLD. The reading always fluctuates by one or two percentage points. So only a rise of at least 3 percentage points that holds for five minutes counts as a reaction. An outlier cannot manage that, a real rise holds for hours.
- A LARGE SAFETY MARGIN. Five times the normal amount has to have flowed before the stop.
Caution
The flip side: the watering guard is deliberately slow. It prevents days of watering into nothing, but it will not notice a slipped hose within the first hour.
5How you can tell the watering guard has stepped in
Impossible to miss, and the same everywhere:
- ON THE DEVICE: the zone tile on the home screen gets a red border, the status at the top right switches to "STOPPED", and the reason replaces the target value.
- IN THE APP: a red bar at the top of the home screen, a red border and a red "STOPPED" badge on the zone tile.
- IN THE LOG: entry "Watering guard — no rise" in red.
Tip
6What to check — in this order
- IS THE TANK REALLY FULL? Open the lid and look, do not trust the display. This is the most common case.
- IS WATER FLOWING? Water the zone by hand and watch. If nothing arrives at the water distributor, it is the pump or the hose.
- IS THE WATER DISTRIBUTOR PLACED CORRECTLY? In the pot, on the soil, not hanging above it and not slipped out.
- IS THE SUCTION HOSE UNDER WATER? It has to be the lowest point; if it draws air, the pump delivers nothing.
- IS THE SOIL WATER-REPELLENT? Completely dried-out soil stops taking up water. The only remedy is to water the pot by hand slowly and in several passes, or to soak it.
7Releasing the zone again
The easiest way is automatic: water the zone by hand after the repair. As soon as the sensor reacts, the lock releases itself — manual watering stays explicitly allowed while the watering guard has halted a zone, exactly for this.
If the soil is already wet after the repair, no rise will come. Then you release the zone by hand.
In the app
Open the zone → red box at the top → "Resume zone".
On the device
Tap the zone tile → "Resume zone" at the very bottom.
8What the watering guard does NOT do
- IT DOES NOT HALT THE WATERING SCHEDULE. Fixed times are an instruction from you that the device does not override. A zone on a watering schedule only gets the warning.
- IT DOES NOT BLOCK MANUAL WATERING. Otherwise you could not check whether the repair worked.
- IT NEVER STOPS A ZONE THAT HAS NEVER REACTED. See step 4.
- IT DOES NOT REPLACE THE DAILY LIMIT. Together they are the safety net: the daily limit caps the damage per day, the watering guard ends the cause.
See also: Sensor error (NIO) · Understanding & checking sensors · Calibrate pump
GOOD TO KNOW
- A zone halted by the watering guard stays halted after a restart. Otherwise a power outage would lift the lock and the watering into nothing would continue.
- If you switch the watering guard off and later on again, what was learned is kept — the zones do not have to qualify again.
- Maintenance mode suspends the watering guard while it runs. A sensor in the air gives no usable answer.
- If a zone runs for months without complaint, you will never notice any of this machinery. It only speaks up when something is genuinely wrong.