Fricking Flex Love!

Sorry. The chart is a 13 month rolling chart, not a 13 month rolling average chart. And it’s a month-to-date (MTD) chart, not a daily value chart.

The blue line is the MTD run time, in hours, of the controller, all zones total except the pool (zone 10). Sample frequency is about once every 10 hrs (it’s labeled on the chart at once every 619 minutes). The chart runs from right to left. The right most ‘point’ is ‘today’ - the left most ‘point’ is exactly 13 months ago to the day.

The green line is just the pool (zone 10).

I measure at the Master Valve terminal, and at Zone 10’s terminal. I algorithmically subtract (internal to the measurement and logging system I use) the pool to produce the blue line, which is thus all landscape watering.

All zones are on Flex Daily - full auto. I don’t touch a thing. That’s the whole purpose of purchasing Rachio IMO.

This is Dallas weather. It’s been unusual enough here this year that it dramatically illustrates how Flex Daily is supposed to work.

The months of May and July were very dry - little rainfall. The chart shows Flex Daily pouring on the water to the landscape - 27 and 31 hours of controller run time in these two months respectively. The other months this Spring/Summer have been very wet - lots of rainfall. Like now, August. The chart again shows Flex Daily immediately responding, this time by cranking down the water a lot. The fact that I’m only at 7 hours MTD so far this month is astonishing. We’ve had a lot of rain this month and the controller is automatically adjusting like it’s supposed to.

There’s another chart I didn’t mention earlier, one that indeed shows the daily watering. It’s at http://www.welserver.com/perl/plot/WEL0343/Sprinkler1.png . It clearly shows that some days are zero-watering days due to earlier rainfall, and other days can be upwards of 4 to 5 hours of water.

(And there’s a third chart that shows minute by minute watering for the past 2 days.)

(The no-watering-at-all period, centered at about 6 months ago (-6 on the x-axis) is simply my exasperation with the controller this past winter. I’m not convinced it’s perfect in freezing weather and/or my incoming weather data wasn’t always good (and I don’t have a freeze sensor connected). After I watered in freezing conditions, lost some sprinkler heads, etc., I just turned off the controller. I’ve learned - gotta have a freeze sensor to absolutely insure a schedule isn’t run for a freezing situations day. I know I can manually change out of Flex Daily mode but that defeats the whole purpose of having an Iro 2. I want to stay in Flex Daily mode 24x7x365 and just not have to remember to do anything with the controller - all year long. And simultaneously have perfectly optimum water usage - not a drop more.)

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@a0128958

Thanks for sharing, this is such great data. Our data scientist is in love with these charts :wink:

:cheers:

You’re welcome. Feels good to make a contribution.

Measurement and logging unit # 343 is what I use for the pool, the garage, degree-day calculation and recording, and the sprinkler system. If you go directly to it, at http://www.welserver.com/WEL0343 , and don’t mind then scrolling down one or two clicks, you’re at all three charts associated with the Iro - 2 day chart showing minute by minute landscape watering ON time, 13 month chart showing daily landscape watering ON time in hrs/day, and another 13 month chart showing landscape MTD ON time in hrs/month.

Actual electrical interface to the Iro is at its terminals. The measurement and logging unit is designed to accommodate thermostats, measuring same thing (ON time). This is 24 VAC, just as is the Iro. Thus, what I implemented is ‘off the shelf.’

Flex Daily works. There’s no question about it. And it’s ‘set and forget.’ The hard part is adjusting the Iro variables to get it to closely model actual and changing conditions.

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I’m in the same boat. I live in Kansas City and we have some crazy hot summers with Aug being the blast furnace of the year. We’ve had a lot of rain this month and a nice week of cool temps in the 70s. All of that has made it so out of my 7 zones, I’ve only watered 1 of them 1 time. Yup, 1 zone, 1 time.

As it stands now, my next watering for most of the yard is scheduled for Aug 28. I almost made it the whole month without watering and my lawn looks fabulous.

*Note my lawn is Bluegrass which as most people know, isn’t very drought/heat resistant.

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The 7 inches of rain we got last night should stave off watering for a while.

whoa! That sounds biblical.

:cheers:

I was going to say “Picture or it didn’t happen”. This is incredible. I’m definitely sharing this with the rest of the team.

:cheers:

My grass got about 7" of water yesterday also… granted it was from my golden retriever constantly going in and out of the pool and carrying with him who-knows how many gallons of water to the grass. And I’m sure that salt water is awesome for my lawn too.

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Same here:

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Talk about saturation!

:cheers: