I have a Rachio 3 controlling 11 zones (9 grass, 2 shrub beds).
Flex Daily - Wed, Sat - Smart Cycle
Weather Intelligence: Freeze Skip ON and Wind Skip ON (I have no other options available)
My controller is not running on Wed or Sat all the time, and I cannot figure out why. One day it did not run at all, and this morning it only ran one zone in a bizarre way.
The day it did not run at all may have been due to a bad power supply (which has been replaced). It then ran for a couple days fine.
Then this morning on a regular water day I noticed in the history that only Zone 1 ran. Zone 1 also ran in a bizarre manner - it ran 11 mins, then 30 min soak, then 11 mins, then 30 min soak, then 11 mins. None of the other 10 zones ran.
There are no weather skips in history, and we have not had rain. I’ve run a few Quick Runs to keep the grass alive when it does not run. I’ve also deleted my schedule and added a brand new one, but this did not help fix my issue. What can I do to get my controller to be more consistent and reliable?
Also, some of the Weather Intelligence features like Saturation Skip and Seasonal Shift are not showing in my setting. I only see Freeze and Wind available to be selected when setting up a FLex Daily schedule.
Flex daily will only water when it needs to. Not all zones will run every time. Do your other zones show that they need to water? Post up a screenshot of your moisture graphs. That being said, it sounds like you set up Flex Daily, and then told the system to only water on two days a week. Flex daily doesn’t run optimally when limited to certain days. Is there a reason you did this? Are you on watering restrictions?
The “bizarre” way that the 1 zone ran is because you have cycle soak enabled on that schedule, which if a zone has high precipitation rate nozzles, or high slope setting, it will break the run into smaller chunks and let the water soak in to avoid runoff or puddling.
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Does your normal schedule start before midnight and finish after midnight? I noticed when mine was setup this way that the rachio calculates the zones running before midnight as if they ran a full day before the rest. So it ended up some times running a couple zones by themselves on a separate day to catch up the moisture level. I ended up creating 2 schedules, one for front and one for back so I could split them up and make sure all zones in that schedule ran on the same date. Seems to have evened them all out properly.
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I think Zone 1 was the only zone not below 50% depletion, and other zones were above 50% depletion as of today, so this is why only Zone 1 ran. Also, Zone was was very depleted so I think that is why it ran a cycle and soak 3 times. Does a zone only run on days it is below 50% depletion (assuming this is what Allowed Depletion % is set to)?
I am only 2x per week watering restrictions (Wed and Sat are my assigned days).
All nozzles are regular fixes nozzles except for Zones 10 and 11 are rotors.
All zones are configured as Flat.
Most zones are configured Lots of Sun, except a few zones are Some Shade.
All zones are Warm Season Grass, except two zones are set as Perennials (previously Shrubs), including Zone 1.
I think what I am going to do is “Empty” all the Zones so that they all water Saturday in a normal Flex Daily - Smart Cycle, then monitor over the coming weeks. I live in Cedar Park, TX, and it has been > 100 degrees here for most of the last couple of weeks. I’ve been doing some Quick Runs to ensure my grass does not die in places, but in doing so I think I may have messed up the systems measurements. Hoping doing the Empty “reset” and taking a hands-off approach will get it back into a better cycle.
Are there any Advanced settings I might consider, or would you recommend just taking a hands off approach? The warm season is going to start to end over the next few weeks, so the system should start to dial back all Zones over time.
Normal schedule used to start just before midnight the day before my watering day and finish by sunrise. I have recently adjusted the run times on a few zones so the cycle does not have to start before midnight for all watering to end before sunrise. Hoping this will prevent the system from thinking a zone started a day prior than the rest. So far I think this is working because last few cycles have started after midnight. Thanks for the advice.
