Since I turned my Rachio back on a couple weeks ago and have been using the Flex Daily schedule my system has been watering every day. That doesn’t seem right and I’m not sure what I’m missing. It doesn’t seem to be putting down enough irrigation depth per watering.
How were you irrigating when the Rachio was on ? I’m trying to figure out if this is a schedule that was somehow behaving differently at a different time.
I’m not surprised you’re watering every day. You have a pretty short setting for roots and a high crop coefficient. Both encourage frequent watering.
Your root depth is fairly small, so the system will want to water more often but for less time in order to not waste any water. For cool season grass the root depth is more like 6 inches by default. I would try increasing this and see if that helps.
Thank you, both for the feedback. I’ve been digging through other posts and I think you’re correct that the root depth may be the main issue. I renovated my lawn at the end of the summer last year growing new grass (Kentucky blue) from seed and I think I set the root depth fairly shallow figuring the new roots couldn’t be very deep. I’ll have to dig up some current roots and make an adjustment. I haven’t touched the system since last year so I’m relearning everything.
Thanks again.
Once you get an idea of where your roots are at, if they aren’t quite down to the recommend level yet for your grass, set the Rachio up for where the roots are currently at and then incrementally increase your root depth number to train the roots to grow deeper. Example: if you want 6" roots and they are currently at 3", set Rachio to 4" and then maybe in 2 - 4 weeks set your roots to 5", and repeat.
Thanks for the additional feedback. That makes sense. I did experiment with the root depth setting and the flex schedule did adjust to longer and less frequent watering.
Excellent news! Glad to hear you got things back on the right track.
