Flex Daily Watering Feels Like It's Watering Too Much

Can you show a screen shot of your moisture graph for the next week by clicking on the ‘>’ next to June 7. So far it’s showing that you’ve watered twice in the past 7 days, so I’m curious to see what’s going on in the next 7 days that will cause it to water 5 times

It’s watering right now FYI

Also the Flex Daily time it’s allowed to water is 4am-11am I believe.

So from your screenshots, nothing looks too crazy as far as what the controller is doing. Your ET starts to get high into the upper .2’s (0.28 on June 11th), which means your frequency will increase leading to less days between watering.

How do you feel about that 0.8 crop coefficient you have? I don’t know your grass type that well, but the default cool season grass coefficient is 0.7. You have it set higher means the system thinks water is being used up more quickly, so it’ll want to water more often.

My grass is a Bluegrass blend designed for the area I live in.

As for the crop coefficient value, I really don’t know how it or I arrived at .8. That’s a very good question. That isn’t something that Rachio adjusts based on the month is it?

I went ahead and adjusted it down to .7

It is not. The coefficient in flex daily stays the same, along with all your other settings… unless you change something of course. The thing that causes water changes in flex daily is the weather (temperature, rain, etc). If your lawn is looking good, think about dialing back that coefficient to the default cool season grass of 0.7. If you want to visually see how it will impact your schedule, do it on one zone and then compare that next 7-14 day watering schedule to see what it was at 0.8. You should see at least one less day I would think.

Yeah my lawn looks absolutely fantastic. It’s a deep, lush green. Of course we’re just now hitting 80s and skirting into the low 90s so it’s not like it’s had to work all that hard.

Dialing it back delayed watering by a day. I wish there was a way to look up the Kc for a given region.

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who knows, maybe it’s out there… most important thing is just keep an eye on things, if your goal is to save as much water as possible with keeping a healthy, green lawn, then just dial it back slowly

Yeah I have searched and searched. The only data I can readily find is for CA and NM. Other than that it’s hard to find. But I will work on dialing that back. I think cool season grasses can go back to as much as .6.

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I’ve looked for that Kc value as well with no luck… Seems like those things have to exist somewhere. I’m not giving up :joy:

did you try the dark web?

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Didn’t I read somewhere that the new default for cold season grass is .8?

Just found it
http://community.rachio.com/t/cool-season-grass-crop-coefficient-new-default-80/5148

good catch, my zones are pre-existing before the change so that’s why i don’t see that when i change my grass type. Like the post says, do the 10% adjustment to see if you’re results are any better.

The kc value of 0.8 that is generally recommended is from the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) Publication #56 Expert Consultation of Revision of FAO Methodologies for Crop Water Requirements.

Richard G. Allen from Utah State University makes the recommendation.

In case anyone wants a little light reading, here’s a link to the publication: Table of Contents

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I almost tagged you @sunny because I had a feeling you would know

LOL, it’s not that I know, it’s that I know how to find the information. Just one aspect of what I do for my clients. Although I have to admit prior knowledge of the existence of this particular publication due to a client request.:smile:

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