On Aug 1st I switched to flex daily schedule in Scottsdale AZ. The water times were much longer but not everyday. The first week I didn’t see the grass change much. The second week I was gone and came back to a nearly dead yard. I have great coverage and new sprinkler heads so it was the Rachio schedule that killed half my yard. I will say I’m pretty disappointed in the Rachio Gen 3 system right. Any suggestions? Has anyone else had this problem?
My lawn has gone a week straight without water due to the well pump being down and never got that bad. Are you sure it ever ran? Also curious, why are their leaves on the ground already? Are the trees in distress?
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Well, lets start by posting screenshots of your setup in Rachio, and tell us the details of your yard (ie, what type/brand/model sprinklers are you using)
Also, prior to Rachio, what did your watering schedule look like?
For reference, I’m in Gilbert, and Rachio waters every 2-3 days (assuming no monsoon storms), and my yard looks good.
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Same here. I’m in the Valley and a flexible schedule works great for our lawn. Just one problem, though. The lawn is doing so well and growing faster than the Hubs likes to mow. 
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I’m in the same boat…It’s borderline that weekly mowings isn’t cutting it (no pun intended…)!
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I think your available water setting might be wrong if you are needing to mow from a boat. 
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This is EXACTLY what happened to me. Hoping to find a solution
@Heyjoe Well, there are a number of us @Arizona people here with very successful Rachio implementations…feel free to start your own thread and include screenshots of your zone settings and figure out where you might have something boogered up.
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Ok @tmcgahey/guru of Rachio! I’m trying the flex daily again and hoping my grass doesn’t get worse and comes back better. It hasn’t really bounced back so not sure what to do. I just adjusted my depletion to 65% but this is what everything looks like. All my zones have the same settings. I’m using the hunter sprinkler body and dual spray rain bird nozzles. This will run for the first time tonight so the watering is longer but seems excessive. Thoughts?
Alright…right off the bat, I personally don’t like to mess with Allowed Depletion. I’d recommend pushing that back to the default 50%.
Since you are just coming onto Rachio, I’m going to assume your root structures haven’t been watered in a way that would promote deep root growth, so lets bring that root depth up to say…5" (assuming this is a somewhat established lawn more than a year old). This will cause the schedule to run more frequently, which probably matches how you watered prior to Rachio.
Everything else looks ok, but the Nozzle PR (Inches Per Hour) setting is cut off in the advanced zone setting. You have Fixed Spray Heads set, and I’m assuming you left the default value in there, and it might not be the most accurate. Do you know the make and model of the sprinkler nozzles in your yard? If not, can you take a picture of one of them?
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Alright I changed to 5in and back to 50% depletion. I used to water 3 times a day before Rachio for 3min each zone.
My nozzles are all rain bird U120 dual spray and the body is Hunter pro stray. Ignore the picture with the blue nozzle, I changed it to U120 rain bird. That picture is to show Hunter.
The U-12 fixed pattern series will, on average, put out about 1.95"/hr.
The second picture is a 10 Series VAN nozzle, and those will put out anywhere from 2.5" - 4.39" based on arc, pressure, and overlap. If you have any of these left, I’d get rid of them and try to stick with fixed heads, as they are much more efficient in their water distribution. If you must have a variable arc nozzle (VAN), I’d always recommend switching to a rotor nozzle like the Hunter MP-Rotators.
That being said, assuming you have all U-series, I think the PR needs to be set to something around the 1.95" range to start.
This is dual spray. The first 6in of grass around the sprinkler head wouldn’t get water so I had to switch to dual.
Looks like they put out the same PR as the U-12 series, so you should be fine there…
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