Climate skip not applied after heavy rain

Hi,
I am on Fixed schedule (every Thursday). We received nearly 1.6in of rain last Tuesday (KTXPLANO70). At this time of the year, this much amount of rain can go easily for 2 weeks with no watering. However, Rachio decided not to apply Climate skip this past Thursday and I had to apply Rain delay manually. Not sure why this happened. Appreciate any help. Thanks in advance.

This is a tough one as I think you are right at the edges of climate skip. It looks back to your last watering (7 days or less) and forward to your next watering (7 days or less) and based on observed precipitation and forecasted temperatures it will determine if based on your crop type it can make it to the next watering. Since you only water once per week.

http://support.rachio.com/article/505-climate-skip

I had the support team check out your account but I think in this case it might be due to a weather station that is not reporting accurately. According to your schedule notification no precipitation was recorded.

Can you try another station near your house?

:cheers:

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Hi Franz,

Thanks for your reply. Couple of things to note:

  1. In addition to the rain received last Tuesday of 1.49in, it was predicted to receive additional 1in of rain this past Sunday. And we did receive another 1in of rain. To summarize, it was scheduled for 02/16 with rain of 1.49in on 02/14 and 1in on 02/20. So, I am guessing the climate skip should have accounted for so much rain.

  2. In pertinent to the station, it is reporting accurately (I think) on PWS website since I have been monitoring for over 2 months now. For last week, please see this link http://www.pwsweather.com/archivewx.php?id=KTXPLANO70&d=20170212&t=week.

If I have understood the Rachio features correctly, the reason Rachio said it received no precipitation is because it just goes 24 hrs in time (rain skip) and in this 24 hrs, there was no rain received. It was 48 hrs before the scheduled run that we received 1.49in of rain. Hope I was clear in explaining what I am thinking :slight_smile:

Thanks again

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@thesaint580

I think you have a handle on the schedules better than I do :wink:

Had the support team do a little more research. The reason climate skip did not kick in is that the last time that schedule ran was on Feb 8th. So here is what would have happened from a logic perspective.

Temperature skip: Is it freezing? No, continue watering.
Rain skip: Do we have cumulative rain equal to your threshold from yesterday (observed) and today (observed/forecasted)? No, continue watering.
Climate skip: Has the schedule run in the last 7 days? No, continue watering.

The main reason we do the 7 day previous check is that we need a baseline from which to measure when it last ran to when it will next run so we can deduce soil moisture levels. In this case since it hadnā€™t watered for over 2 weeks we couldnā€™t set a baseline. In most cases watering would have happened within 7 days in the past, and we might have skipped. Also note that we cap each day at the maximum depth of water for your zone (+10% for saturation). Most grass zones are about .5 inch before they become saturated. Even if you received 1.5 inches on one day we only count that as .5 inch due to runoff and saturation. So, if you did water 7 days in the past, received 1.5 inches two days ago, and donā€™t water for another 7 days, I canā€™t say for 100% certainty that we would skip since the waterings are extended, and if there was only one significant rain event.

Hope this helps, good discussion for sure.

:cheers:

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Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation. Makes sense as to why it may not be skipping the schedule after the heavy rain. Appreciate it again.

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Iā€™ve had a similar issue twice recently. On flex schedule, physical rain sensor activated as well, receiving 1.8 inch rainfall.
Humidity was still very high and mild weather.

Havenā€™t noticed this behavior before.
Will change the reporting weather station and see if that helps ( although it is further away).

Having similar issue on flex schedule lately.
Physical rain sensor had also activated, near 2" precipitation. Less than 36 hrs later, system ran,
( which I shut down manually).Havenā€™t noticed this before in over a year of usage.

@turnsteel, just to clarify, the rain sensor was activated (shown your activity feed) and deactivated?

If you havenā€™t already, Iā€™d recommend reviewing your moisture level graph to see if thereā€™s a reporting error from the weather station. If the weather station data is wrong, ā€œfillā€ your zone(s) to override the weather data and change your weather station.

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Hi there,

I just installed my first unit so Iā€™m relatively new.

Iā€™m in San Diego and we recently had about 3 inches of rain, a real rarity. But the system imposed no delays and actually watered more because it saw warmer projected temperatures. Like I said though, Iā€™m new and looking for help in setting it up.

Iā€™m totally confused by the poor PWS weather network. Itā€™s poor at best and tying to it seems to be an issue. (Station KCAELCAJ1)

I have my own personal weather station which reports to Weather Underground and it has been on line and accurate for years. There are multiple stations around me within just a few mile radius. There are very few PWS stations around here and none are apparently accurate.

I saw something that Rachio cannot tie to the WUnderground network?

I think this would be a huge plus for Rachio if this could be accomplished.

Thanks in advanceā€¦

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@rdibbxsh

This is probably due to your chosen weather station not reporting precipitation.

This article explains how to chose a weather station (Iā€™d suggest enabling the PWS toggle).

http://support.rachio.com/article/405-choosing-weather-station

My guess is that in SD there has to be a few around you that report correct precipitation? For PWS we care more about precipitation and less about temperature.

We want to vastly improve our PWS footprint. This is on the roadmap.

There are a couple workarounds at the moment, all somewhat technical.

http://support.rachio.com/article/249-connecting-weatherunderground-using-weathersnoop
http://support.rachio.com/article/351-setting-up-pws-to-pwsweather-weather-for-you

100% agreed.

Hope this helps. If you have trouble finding a good station in your area please let us know.

:cheers:

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Hey @rdibbxsh-
I just checked out your account, and I am seeing you are currently connected to KSEE, which from what I can tell is not reporting any precipitation recently. Unfortunately, none of the national weather stations even close to you are reporting (checked the five closest stations.) We are noticing that there are many national California stations are not showing precipitation data currently- I am not yet sure if this is a new issue due to the amount of rain you have gotten recently or if we are just starting to notice since you havenā€™t gotten rain in so long! Luckily, you have quite a few personal weather stations nearby. You mentioned PWS_KCAELCAJ24, it looks like it is reporting precip, but Iā€™m not sure how accurate it is. My best suggestion is to go to this link, select the custom date tab on station history, and put in a date you remember getting quite a bit of rain. Then you can see how well that aligns with the precipitation you experienced. There is another PWS reporting precipitation, PWS_KCELCAJ1, you can check that one the same way here. Let me know how those two stations look, we will get you sorted out!
McKynzee :rachio:

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PS- also noticed the rain skip threshold on both of your schedules are 1/8 in. You can set this to 1/16 in if you want your schedule to be more sensitive to precipitation!

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Hi McKynzee,

Letā€™s use February 27th as the rain day. More rain in that day than we normally get in a few months.

I checked the data for that date (KCAELCAJ24). The ā€˜Summaryā€™ box (on top), shows no precipitation. However, if you look at the actual data for every 15 minutes, it does show the rain. Not sure where the Rachio reads the data fromā€¦???

The rain data from that station seems pretty close to my station. https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KCALAMES2#history

I did write to WUnderground and ask about the ability to use their data. Itā€™s far more accurate and there are probably at least 5 times the number of stations.

Randy

Not sure how to change the Rain Skip Thresholdā€¦

@rdibbxsh I believe if itā€™s showing on the actual data we should be receiving it- I am having trouble getting summary data to show on any station right now? Donā€™t know if thatā€™s an issue with PWS. I will double check for you. As for pulling data from WU, there are some options outlined here but I will warn you they can get pretty technical. I do agree that this could greatly expand our weather reporting, which is definitely something we are looking into moving forward.

PS- Here is an article outlining how to edit your rain skip thresholdā€¦ http://support.rachio.com/article/116-watering-time-features#9

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Have done as you suggested. Will monitor for further issues. Are you saying the rain sensor doesnā€™t override the forecast? I assumed the system would consider physical rainfall over forecast conditions

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@turnsteel Let us know- a physical rain sensor should work as a complete interruption that overrides any forecast. Unfortunately, we have no control over when the rain sensor dries out and stops interrupting the schedule. Some sensors have a vent on the bottom that you can adjust to make the sensor dry out more slowly- if you want to post a picture of your sensor I can tell you if you have that vent or notā€¦

McKynzee :rachio:

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