Hey everyone, we bought a house with an irrigation system 6 years ago and I just now got around to turning it on. Love our Rachio 3, it’s awesome! Question about the size of each zone in advanced settings defaulting to 500 square feet: We have a fairly large yard, ~50,000 sqft divided into 9 zones. Two of these zones are fairly square-ish in coverage, but the rest of them are are in-line across the yard. Their coverage area would probably look like a skinny rectangle.
Would it help a great deal if I did a lot of vigilant work measuring out the various zone areas, or is the default value sufficient?
Zone size is only used to very roughly estimate water use in absence of a flow meter. I don’t use it. It has no bearing on schedules. Default is fine if you don’t care about estimated water usage. I’ve seen folks measure area using Google Earth.
I actually disagree and believe that accurately measuring the size of your zone, types of sprinkler heads you have and their output, the depth of your roots and all the other factors included in an irrigation system lead to the best water allocation. I do not have a flowmeter however when will rain is predicted the weather intelligence can tell me how much water I’m expected to put down and how much is expected to rain and determine if I skip as necessary. I may be over studying this and making more out of it. However if you spend money on a good control system and you want to be accurate and more environmentally friendly then why not use all the features correctly in the system so that you do get the best output. I moved from CA to TX and I am seeing many of the extra benefits work nicely that are part of Rachio. I put one in which is now my second. I have no rain meter and rely on weather intelligence. Learning the season in TX has been easier with my Rachio.
