I have the same concern–also in So Cal (so is it a regional issue)
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“Zone 5 Back grass was updated from 8 to 10 minutes” today at about 11 am in the midst of a cold rain storm!
@gotMoxie, are your seasonal adjustments reducing or adding time? If there’s no adjustment needed, water budgeting will not change the seasonal adjustment.
ET calculations are based on numerous inputs; temperature, hours of sunlight, humidity, wind, etc. Besides days getting longer again, perhaps wind speeds have been higher than average? We could try using a different weather station to see if the data provided is better to what you’re experiencing.
@sbillard, I’m curious if you and @gotMoxie are using the same weather station?
It’s hard to comment without reviewing the details of the weather data provided. I’ll have our support team pull your data logs to review the data we received from your preferred weather station. Usually such discrepancies are weather station related.
Out of curiosity, what would make understanding ET variances and their impacts to watering durations easier for you as a user? Do you think knowing daily ET would help? Seeing changes visually to the weather data? i.e. ET over Temp and other inputs? Let us know how we can make this feature better 
Best, Emil
Another thing I want to add is that for our Spring software release we will be revisiting water budgeting for fixed schedules, making the algorthims even more real time based (just before the schedule runs) and moving to something less complex.
Would be nice to be able to see weather station history somewhere on the rachio app/web page. Would be a great help in understanding if the data in looks realistic.
Franz - sounds like your attempting to make Fixed and Flex schedules have roughly the same capability? If so, is there any reason to maintain both?
We are still debating things internally, they do things very differently in regards to when/how much they water.
The focus for this Spring will be simplification across the board.
Emil, I’m using weather station MID_D2298.
The seasonal adjustments are Adding time to my watering which doesn’t make sense as we move from 100+ temperatures down to 50-60 degree weather. It’s quite possible that wind speed could have something to do with it but we aren’t experiencing santa anas currently.
I’m using KSNA
Hi Emil,
I actually have noticed the same thing. I am in Campbell, Ca, so a bit north of these folks and the seasonal adjustments are still higher than I originally set the zone for.
I might not be understanding the whole seasonal adjustment thing, but to me it seems if I set a drip zone to 10 minutes, it should get longer in the summer (like it has been) but in winter, I would expect it to drop down below the 10 minute time that I set. It is properly not watering when it’s raining, just the seasonal adjustments are not what I am expecting. I am using Weather Station: MID_E5689, if that helps.
Thanks, Chris
@brkaus, thanks for the recommendation. Would you like to see weather station history for the last week (similar to Flex schedule’s moisture graphs)? Or did you have something else in mind?
Thanks @gotMoxie, @sbillard, & @chrisrose98. I’ll have the support team review your accounts. It’s hard to pinpoint what might be causing the adjustments without reviewing the data the weather station is sending us.
Correct, this is how water budgeting should work.
RE: Weather station history - whatever is easiest would be fine. I don’t see any reason to view more than a week. Only a suggestion because garbage in -> garbage out and we have no view of what is being collected for the station.
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@sbillard, we figured out the issue you’re experiencing (and probably everyone else who’s posted on this issue). The emails that you’re receiving are referencing the base duration (when your schedule was created) and the current seasonal adjustment duration. For more information, please refer to this support article. As such, the last seasonal adjustment duration is not reflected in the email. We’re reviewing the email copy and will be making some adjustments to avoid the confusion going forward.
For reference, this week’s seasonal adjustment is -2%.
These adjustments can be seen in the schedule menu screen under Seasonal Adjustment
Hope this helps. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
So I guess that what really happened is that the current run time was adjutsed from 10.2 min to 10.0 min? Sure couldn’t have seen that from the message.
One last note on this…
In our 2.5 release, we’ll be moving away from a cumulative seasonal adjustment to a per watering adjustment using a peak baseline compared to real time evapotranspiration. This will remove most of the confusion the water budgeting adjustments have had to date. While cumulative adjustments have worked well (think a trendline of data), after having consulted with industry experts, we believe our new approach will be simpler and more efficient. As the release gets closer, we will release documentation on this new approach.
Hope this helps. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
@sbillard, sorry for any confusion in the message. We’re reviewing options to make it easier to understand, such as showing the change in minutes week or week or just the change in the seasonal adjustment percentage. The the moment, the best place to monitor changes in time would be to keep an eye on the Adjusted Watering Time
So, in my case, my seasonal adjustment is +36%. I don’t remember setting it above the base of 0% and assume you did?? I was expecting that the adjustment would be in the negative adjustment as of the rainy season? Am I missing something obvious?
Thanks
@chrisrose98, sorry, I pulled your data logs but need to summarize them yet. The +36% is a cumulative adjustment since the schedule was created, which gets adjusted once per week. More details to come soon.
@chrisrose98, looks like the data provided by the weather station reporting to your account adjusted the seasonal adjustment percentage +10% on 12/24, +10% on 1/1 & +2% on 1/8. Do you believe each week should have been decreasing?
@gotMoxie, the data provided by the weather station reporting to your account adjusted the seasonal adjustment percentage +7% on 12/29, +10% on 1/5 & +10% on 1/12. Do you believe these should all be decreasing as well?
well, I guess I made the assumption that it should decrease because it is colder and rainy. I also was assuming that if I set a baseline in the spring, while I knew it would go up in the summer, I thought it would actually go down below the 100% level in the winter - I guess that’s not the case?
@chrisrose98, that’s a very fair assumption to make. Due to the date range we use to calculate the weekly adjustment I think we’re seeing an edge case in your area (as noted by a few other users). Please know that we’re documenting these edge cases and working on enhancements for our spring release to address them.
If you’re interested in beta testing our spring release to help stress test new scheduling logic, [please fill out this form][1] and we’ll keep you posted once it’s available in the coming months.
Best, Emil
[1]: http://goo.gl/forms/KPQeGmfHQA
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