Hi. I just bought the 16 zone Rachio and I’m trying to get it set up. Last year, we hired a new landscape company for our home, and they installed soaker hoses in our shrubs and flower beds so that we could water compliantly during water restrictions (with a separate controller). But now, I have areas that are covered by an original sprinkler head zone AND a new soaker hose zone. I’m not sure the best way to set this up. I could set it up without the sprinkler head zones at all and just use the soaker hoses. But is it possible to set up all my zones and program the Rachio to only use the soaker zones during water restriction periods? What should I do? For the record, I have 13 sprinkler zones and 3 soaker zones.
Hi @Budge!
Are the soaker hoses on their own zone wires? I’m assuming so…
If so, you can install the 13 sprinkler zone wires into the first 13 wire terminals and the remaining 3 soaker hoses into the remaining three wire terminals. They would all function independently, so you couldn’t run the soaker hose and sprinklers in one zone simultaneously, but this may be helpful for avoiding the water police 
Let me know if this helps and if you have any other questions…
McKynzee 
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Hi Mckynzee. Thank you for your response. My question is how will the Iro know that there are 3 areas covered by 6 zones? If the Iro is programmed to assume that each zone is an independent area, then it will water those 3 areas twice in the same cycle, right? I’m curious about what my options are for programming during the times without water restrictions and the times with water restrictions.
Do you need the sprinkler heads for anything else in the zones? Cause if the hoses and the heads are covering the same exact thing I would just stick with the hoses at all times since those should be more efficient.
If you still wanted to keep using them you would need to calculate the precipitation rate that results from running both the heads and the hoses and put that in the settings for the zones. That would cover the times when they can all run. But you would need to change the rate back to just the hose rate when you couldn’t run the heads. I don’t think there is a way to automate it so you just be changing it yourself whenever the restrictions change.
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Hi. Thank you for the reply and sorry for the delay coming back. I finally got my Rachio installed. As for the zones, it turns out the sprinkler zones and the soaker zones are not identical…meaning the sprinkler zone covers more area than it’s corresponding soaker zone. So I don’t think I can go without those sprinkler zones completely. I took your advise and I’m going to calculate the PR using the equation [96.25 x (gal/min)/(area)]. I assume I’ll want to double the calculated PR for these zones so that the Rachio cuts back the watering times during the normal watering season. But during water restrictions, I’m not sure what to do about that.
Hey @Budge-
What are your restrictions like? That would be helpful in trying to come up with a solution here…
McKynzee
@Budge, I’m not sure I understand why you would want to alter the PR…it defeats the purpose of finding the value for scheduling purposes.
To be honest, it sounds like the landscape company may need to correct the design of these zones. Is there a reason why the soaker hoses weren’t installed in a way that could eliminate the sprinkler heads?
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Is it possible to adjust the rotors to not cover the soaker areas, or is it possible to close the nozzle on the heads that overlap the soaker without effecting non soaker coverage?
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