I apologize if this has been asked before, but if the temperature is below 32 degrees during a watering cycle, will Rachio delay or cancel the cycle to avoid watering in freezing conditions?
I own a basic Rainbird sprinkler system and am looking into purchasing a temperature/rain gauge for the system to control rain and temperature delays. The installation estimate I was given for those parts is $200 so if Rachio has this functionality, it would seem like a better option.
@Phialpha31 The good news is that is a great product suggestion and would be very easy to add to our current rain delay functionality. I am going to put that into our product backlog and see where it sits in our list of priorities. While it would only take a couple of hours to put into our cloud, allowing users the ability to choose whether or not they wanted that feature is harder since the build/test/submit cycle of the mobile apps are much longer so we need to review each feature request that goes through every layer of our system (mobile --> cloud). Thanks for asking! Let us know if you have any other questions.
my guess is if it is near 32deg your system should be flushed already. if your pipes and valves freeze with water in them your done. Running the system wont do anything running water will not freeze in fact that would be preferred to the water freezing in the heads.
Not like that here in Texas. Our systems remain functional all year long. I think that would be a great feature as we often see systems running on the few days where the temperature if below freezing and it can create very dangerous roads as the water runs off and freezes.
@jonpaterson @SHOboat @rgarza28 @p3pilot @Phialpha31 This is now part of weather intelligence (rain delay). If it is currently freezing or below, the schedule will not run.
This is great! My only feedback (having lived in a cold climate before) is that water can sometimes freeze on surfaces like leaves when ambient temperature reads over 32. I’d suggest setting the threshold to sometime higher (maybe 37… or even 40) to be safe.
To be honest, I would like to do the opposite. I live in a coastal region where we never have to worry about pipes freezing, but we have to worry about trees and plants freezing. One of the most common commercial techniques is run sprinklers when freezing to prevent plants from freezing. I think it would be a great idea to have the option for the controller turn the water on when it hits freezing temperatures.