Hi, My Rachio 3 seems to be ll over the place scheduling.
I emptied all zones the other day in an attempt to force it to water all zones consistently. The problem is that a couple of zones water one day and then the others water the next or following day. It rained last night and the moisture in several zones is a lot less than others (47% vs 91%). With the hot weather we have been having a moved the crop coefficient for 80 to 90% as the grass was starting to brown.
This causes problems because the days with only a couple of zones start round 11PM and by 1-2AM. This may start fungus problems with the hot/humid weather we are currently experiencing in Central Virginia
I am using flex daily and I believe all zone are set the same except zone 11 which has misters.
That’s pretty much how flex daily works. It will water each zone based on its needs, and depending on the zone settings, they may not all run at the same time. If you emptied the moisture “bucket”, and the rain caused the zones to show different moisture levels, the zones are not set up the same.
As for the start/stop and fungus issue, I’m assuming this is grass, and I’m assuming you have the schedule set to end by sunrise? This has been a hot topic over the last few years. It’s working the way it is currently designed to work. Lets say sunrise is 6am, and you have 6, 1 hour zones, and all were scheduled to run, it would start at midnight. Now, if only 1 or two zones need to run, it will still start at midnight, and will end up finishing at 1am or 2am respectively.
I can’t say with 100% certainty that it will change the way the zone depletes (I don’t think it does), but slope for sure affects the way a zone would water if the nozzle PR is high enough. Typically slope adjustments with higher PR nozzles will force a “cycle soak” to prevent runoff.
Yep this is a sunrise issue. The software is not smart enough to add up the scheduled run times and subtract it from Sunrise time to determine the correct start time for an instance. It appears to have a static start time that is calculated when the schedule is created. Why it’s not dynamic like other things is a lack of forethought. The water times and days change automatically based on weather. A simple algorithm could modify the start time on every occurrence of the schedule when it decides it’s going to water. That calculation could be done at the max run time offset from sunrise.
Couldn’t agree more, this summer has been very hot and humid with higher temps/humidity extending into the night. Watering 2 -3 zones from 1130pm - 1m is just encouraging the fungus, causing brown patch… I suppose I could change from flex daily to fixed schedule but that kind of defeats the purpose of the Rachio… Hard to believe this hasn’t been addressed
Could try that, I think the problem is that I have 11 zones running about 39 minutes each. Concerned it will run to late in the morning and temp will be over 90 during August cuasing to much evaporation
I am having this issue as well, I have 10 zones running 55min each, flex daily, end by sunrise and my controller starts watering around 11PM and ends by sunrise. From what I understand this is extremely bad from a fungus perspective. I can’t figure out how to have the controller split the watering between two or more days such that it does not start at 11PM. Ideally, I have played with various settings and I was unable to get the results I am looking for. I was looking for a capability to not start watering until maybe 3AM and end by 8AM obviously this will only complete about half the zones on day 1, so I was looking for the controller to finish the remaining zones the following day.
