While I dont have a finish by sunrise setting I do have my flex daily set to end by 5:45AM. Oddly enough when it determines only 1 zone needs to be ran that particular day for the 23min, it starts it at the original start time of the entire schedule instead of at 5:23am.
I don’t really care about this, but isn’t it counter intuitive? We don’t want moisture to sit on the grass because it can develope a fungus.
Just wondering if the rachio team is looking into this or is that just the way the algorithm is to make sure the schedule completes on time?
We stack all of the zones in a flex daily schedule and currently start the schedule at the furthest back point. Not ideal but it is what we have today. If you put each flex daily zone into an individual schedule it will correctly water at each individual start time.
If I took each zone and put in its own flex daily schedule and set an end by X time (can only do 1 by sunrise right?), what happens when multiple schedules want to run on the same day? Will it control so that they don’t try and all run at the same time? Or do I need to control the end by X time so the schedules don’t overlap, including soak cycles?
Unless something has changed recently, you are only allowed one schedule to use End By Time or End By Sunrise. Once you have any one schedule using either of those, then none of your other schedules can use End By Time or End By Sunrise.
If you have multiple schedules, the Rachio does a good job of queuing them properly. The problem is, you can’t rely on End By to work very well if you have more than a couple of zones in a single schedule, and creating multiple schedules only allows a single occurrence of End By, forcing you to use start times for the other schedules.
I suffer from this same problem. It would be nice if the controller split watering across two or more days when there are too many zones and the runtime on the zones create this condition.
Signed up in this forum to solve this very issue and can’t believe it’s the same issue from two years ago. Seems like a simple programming change to adjust start time based on number of zones scheduled to run. I don’t understand why this hasn’t been fixed.
Created a login as I’m also experiencing this issue. Was working perfect until a few months ago I noticed the time was getting earlier and earlier.
My system only has 5 zones. Daily flex - end by sunrise.
Right now it just ran and finished after 45 mins of watering… it’s 2:15am…
What’s the fix? I saw a comment to split each zone to their own schedule? Also saw turning off end by sunrise, and put a time in there instead? What’s the general recommendation on fixing this?
Was never like that before. Total estimated runtime of running everything would be approx 3 hrs… so even then I would expect for it to start at around 3-4am
I am surprised and disappointed that this has not been fixed for three freaking years. My flex daily is supposed to run for 2.5 hours and it is starting it’s run at 1AM and ending at 3.30AM. Rather than starting 2.5 hours before sunrise (sunrise is at 6am, so starting at 3.30AM).
This is causing fungus issues in the lawn due to the moisture sitting on the grass for that long.
The reason I went with Rachio is that things like this are easier to fix in software but seeing this, I am thinking of returning the Rachio and going with something else.
Unless your maximum run time is extraordinarily long, just start in early morning instead. Here, sunrise is 6:29, so say you have about 5:30 of maximum watering time. Just start at 5 AM instead, and it will always finish by 10:30 AM (which is fine), and usually much earlier.
I agree that this problem should have been fixed, but consider this a good workaround. Even if fixed, SOME days (and quite often after a lot of rain) it will still start at 1 AM for you, causing the same problem.
That is whaty I am doing right now but it is not optimal. I am basically starting at a fixed time. This makes the whole end before sunrise feature useless for me.
At one point my total run-time was putting my schedule start time at mid-night or 1AM.
Also while I agree this might still be a problem sometimes even with the issue fixed, it should be rarer and for those times, it will be dealt with fungicides that I use when it rains excessively and there is a lot of moisture.
I’ve used the fixed time start from the get go. Just as easy. Looked at my total duration and set it up so that it ends early in the morning, a little after what is sunrise for most of the year. Works fine.
I have rotary nozzles on all of my grass zones, so they already have a long run time. And then I also have clay loam with an AWC of 0.2, so that makes my runtime massive. I have it set to end before 7:15am, so my lawn zones start at 2:30am. Not great for avoiding expensive fungal issues. It’s pretty rare that all my grass zones run on the same day either.
Having the runtime to end later in the morning isn’t an option since I have a black lab who chews everything in the yard, including sprinkler nozzles, and toddlers who want to run through them before we get in the car to go to daycare.
I feel like this issue is pretty ridiculous for being around for so long. It’s not like the HomeKit issue that has tons of different layers to it. It’s calculating a start time. I really can’t believe that changing an equation in start time is THAT difficult for this issue to be hanging around for literal years.
$start_time = $preferred_end_time - $run_time_of_zones_that_are_actually_scheduled instead of
$start_time = $preferred_end_time - $total_run_time_of_all_zones
