How do I disable the rain sensor for some programs? I’ve got some cloches on some garden beds/zones that I want to water, even if it is raining. I have other other zones that are not covered that I would like to not water when the rain sensor is triggered. In the program configuration, I see how to set “rain skip” for a program, but this does not work. I presume this is skipping watering based on weather reports and not the actual rain sensor. I think what is missing is a toggle for rain sensor activation on the “Edit Schedule>Smart Features>Weather Intelligence” page. It would be nice if any sensor configured for “Rain” could appear there and be disabled like “Rain Skip”.
Hi @Chapin!
Unfortunately we do not currently support this feature. I am going to change this post to “Product Suggestions” so we can properly log it!
Out of curiosity, could you replace your physical rain sensor and use that intelligence feature instead?
McKynzee 
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The Intelligence feature hasn’t really worked for me. the actual rain-sensor has worked best. It really seems that the locally connected rain-sensor should be part of Intelligence.
My soil type and sprinkler situation isn’t really covered by the Rachio.
Another suggestion/request:
When the Rain-sensor is activated, I can manually run any zone, but I cannot manually run a schedule. It seems that a schedule will not run when manually initiated if the rain-sensor has been activated.
Could you make a manually initiated “Run Schedule” work, regardless of Rain-sensor status?
Thanks.
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Also, and I’ve mentioned this before, but I think it is still true, an activated rain-sensor does not engage the “Rain Delay” status of the controller/interface. It might be nice if an activated rain-sensor triggered Rachio to indicate a Rain Delay, even if intelligence does not indicate rain.
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@Chapin Understood. Have you ever checked out the weather data your selected station is providing? I wonder if it isn’t recording any precipitation.
Regardless, I think you pointed out multiple shortcomings in our support of rain sensors. It would be nice for their “activated” status to be more visible on the dashboard, and you should be able to manually run whatever you want in that state. I also like the idea of having the control over what zones it pertains to. I will make sure to get your suggestions to the team!
McKynzee
The nearest reliable weather station is a few miles away and can get radically different precipitation than I do.
At the end of the day, a local rain sensor works really well, certainly well enough and much simpler for my needs.
My zones are primarily containers on a deck and straw bales. All are fed with a 15psi drip system. I haven’t found a good way to set up containers or straw bales as soil types and a low pressure drip system as sprinkler types. The basic Orbit rain sensor seems to saturate and dry at a similar rate to my containers and bales.
It does seem that a Rain-Sensor is or should be another tool in the “Weather Intelligence” suite of tools. It gives very localized data. I suppose ideally, if you had a local PWS and a rain sensor, they would engage and disengage at about the same time. It does seem that a local rain sensor is more accurate data than a remotely located PWS or further located (and maybe more reliable) airport weather station.
@mckynzee, I’m hoping you can twist their arm to do this. I requested last year that the rain sensor status show somewhere on the screen near where rain delay is. Last year I had a period where the rain sensor activated, then had several power outages over several days, and had no way of telling whether it had ever deactivated. The status, whether it’s active or deactivated should show on the dashboard.
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Plus 1 on having a switch in the zone advanced tab to disable the rain sensor. I have a few hanging baskets of flowering plants that have a drip system attached. They are on the porch so they are covered when it rains. Due to the exposure they can get a ton of sun and dry out quickly. I read in another post that there was major revamp to the system planned or currently going on. Could something get added to the advanced tap. Set default to use the rain sensor.
Thanks
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I second hang-nail’s request. I am about to take delivery of a gen 2 and am now rather alarmed that you cannot override the rain delay by zone. It’s not a question of being able to water manually but to configure for zones that never get rainwater: hanging baskets under roof eaves, cloches and glass houses, covered porches etc… I am replacing my Hunter PRO-C controller where this can be done easily, two of my zones are configured so that when rain override switches watering off these zones continue to be watered automatically. Am now wondering what it is I can do! Maybe I’ll have to keep the PRO-C to run just these two zones - madness!
I think this unless the sensor already had this feature built in, it would be impossible to do with existing wiring. That is, unless Rachio or someone else creates a sensor or go between for the wiring.
I may have misunderstood your point garyjnj1, but I don’t think it has anything to do with sensors. What is needed is an adjustment to the Rachio’s firmware so that each watering zone can be tagged in the setup process to either be subject to the intelligent weather override (or indeed the local sensor override if a sensor is installed) or it can be tagged to ignore such overrides and continue watering to the basic schedule. In this way zones that are under cover can be set to be watered whatever the weather is doing while uncovered zones will be watered only when the lack of rain dictates. So it’s a software issue not a hardware one.
Hey @WokingWounded-
Just to be clear, you can exclude zones from the Weather Intelligence rain skip feature, but all zones will be affected by a physical rain sensor. You would just need to create separate schedules for those zones you don’t want affected by the rain skip intelligence.
@garyjnj1 As long as the rain sensor isn’t in the common, it is possible for us to override the rain sensor on a zone by zone basis with our current hardware (it may require a firmware update, don’t know for sure). So we could implement this at some point without any sort of hardware update!
McKynzee
Ah, good news on the weather intelligence. If I can get my weather station to talk to pws them all is solved. Otherwise I had already been wondering about using a separate schedule with the sensor which will be an ok plan b. Meanwhile I think I will just wait until the kit is delivered and I can start playing in real life.
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@WokingWounded Depending on where your PWS reports we can get those connected no problem 
. We work directly with Aeris Weather, HamWeather, PWSWeather.com, WeatherForYou.com, and the CWOP network. If your station reports to Weather Underground, @Gene created an awesome bridge here to connect. Congrats on the new controller BTW 
Ah, thanks for the clarification. I thought the hardwiring prohibited such capabilities. Nice to know this capability exists. Any ETA on the Firmware update?
I would also like to vote this up. I have covered drip zones (patio/porches) that need water even when there is precipitation (or a triggered rain sensor which I have) and that also need to adjust for climate. Today I am using Flex Monthly, with Rain Skip = Off, but the sensor still causes a skip. So, I have to remember to water – undoing the whole point of rachio.
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This is definitely needed. Would make sense at the schedule level with an ignore rain sensor switch.
I also have plants on a porch that are covered and get no ran from the sky, only drip irrigation.
I use weather intelligence but like the rain sensor as a backup since I already have it and it works very well.
For those of you with the porch plants… would you posting up some photos of your setups? Maybe in a new thread. I’d love to see them.
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I think the ability to disable rain sensor from various zones would be a great fearure.
What kind of soil do you have? Rachio has all listed.