I just installed my Rachio v3 and tried to change the schedule timing to “finish before sunrise”. For some reason, the app created a schedule that starts at 7:15pm and runs until 2:16am, when sunrise isn’t until 5:40am. I’m in San Diego, so I thought that it might be a problem with time zones, but even pretending that it’s using the EDT sunrise time doesn’t make sense. Why isn’t it trying to end closer to sunrise?
It takes into account the time for all zones in a schedule to run and backs that off the 5:40am time. If not all zones are scheduled, it still starts at the same time, but finishes early.
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Thanks @tmcgahey… I had the same question!
Not a fan of how that works, though.
I understand it having to start at 2:00AM on the rare days that all of my zones need to run (to be done by 6:45AM when we let the dogs out), but starting at 2:00AM EVERY DAY seems crazy, and now makes me worry about getting brown patch disease on my tall fescue lawn. 
Yeah, not a fan. I may go back to ‘start at 5am’ to avoid it staring during dinnertime the evening before. It’s still light out at 7:15!
It clearly knows how much it plans to water and for how long, so blindly assuming the maximum runtime is weird.
I would argue that this functionality is just broken. It’s the same problem with End by time X. The start time should vary, not the end time. It’s too bad, it’s could be a really useful feature.
We are aware that it’s not ideal, actually a fairly difficult problem to solve for various reasons.
We’d like to tackle this when things slow(?) down around here 
For more information than you need…
Thanks, @franz. I concur with most of the sentiments on that thread, particularly with the last guy whose watering starts in mid-afternoon with the current algorithm. I’m going to switch to a fixed start time and monitor for any changes to “before sunrise”.
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@franz bumping this thread.
I just started using Rachio 3 Flex watering. I am having the same issues as above. I set the system to end before a certain time (in the AM just before everyone gets up and needs water pressure for taking showers 
). Most days the system does not need to water all zones, so it is starting way too early on those days (before midnight) and I am now developing a fungus on the lawn from consistently having it moist through out the entire night.
Your comment in 2018 eluded to a change coming to make this behavior more in line to how people would like to water their lawns. Has their been any progress? or maybe I need to upgrade to newer software?
Thanks in advance!
I was about to post on this same topic too. Been using flex daily for over a year now and haven’t had an issue. The start time always varied depending on how moany of the zones were going to run to end by sunrise. Well today randomly Rachio is currently watering my lawn zones right now middle of the day for 5 hrs when it is set to end by sunrise. Then looking ahead its going to run in two days at 730 pm. It’s never done that before earliest it has ever started was just after midnight and that was when all zones were going to be watered that same time. Otherwise usually starts about 2 to 3 am. Not sure what to do but may follow as above and just have a set start time for it.