Ok. I installed my 8 zone unit and input my square footage per zone. After that, I looked at the expected run time for my first run of the system. It is saying that the Rachio will run my sprinklers for a WHOPPING 8 Hours and 36 MINUTES. This seems like an insanely large amount of water. Can this be right? As such, I changed one zone which has some trees (not trying to water them) to just cool season grass and that got it down to 6hours and 16 minutes. But again, that too seems far to much water/cost. My very first run using my Rachio will be on Sunday. I figured I should not start it for the first time until the weather reports are not showing rain.
Inputs are as follows:
Flexible Daily Schedule
Square footage: Z1-1080, Z2-1080, Z3-500, Z4-500, Z5-1750, Z6-1750, Z7-683, Z8-683
Vegetation Type type: Cool Season Grass Z1-Z2, Z4-8; (w/partial) shrubs in Z3
Soil Type: Clay Loam
Exposure: Lots of sun Z1, Z2, Z3; Some Shade Z4,Z8; Lots of shade Z5,Z7; Mostly shade Z6
Nozzles: Rotor Head Z1-2,Z4-8; Fixed head Z3
Slope: Flat surface Z1-Z5,Z7-Z8; Slight Z6
Root Depth: Z1-2, Z4-Z8=6; Z3=15
Watering Schedule: Flexible Daily; Currently shows watering to be done on April 22(6hr,16min), 28(6hr,16min), 29(6hr,16min) & May 1st(6hr,16 min).
I’m using Rainbird 5000 nozzles (90+% of the lawn) with specs of:
Precipitation rate: 0.20 to 1.01 inches per hour (5 to 26 mm/h)
Radius: 25 to 50 feet (7,6 to 15,2 m)
Radius may be reduced up to 25% with radius reduction screw
Pressure: 25-65 psi (1,7 to 4,5 bar)
Flow Rate: 0.73 to 9.63 gpm (4,2 to 36,6 l/m)
On the high side, 6 hours(360min) x 9.63gpm = 3,466.8 gal/Run Cycle. Now not sure if I am to multiply that number by the total number of sprinkler heads I have installed(???) but are the run times normal? Should I go back to the default 500sqft?
The Grass Seed supplier indicates that for the tall fescue type that I have I should only be watering 1" per week. They say that this will cause the grass roots to grow longer (max of 4 ft over time) and become more drought tolerant. So, considering this schedule and the seed type this is going to be an interesting summer…