Guidance on Flex Daily schedule

Modawg2k suggested I start a new thread for advice on how to customize new Rachio Gen 2’s Flex daily schedule for my locale/climate.

Started out with default config then proceeded to adjust the slopes and sprinkler head types for each of my 7 zones. Found a University agriculture doc that prompted the formum to recommend soil type for my area. With Bermudagrass also have soil depth set to 6 inches.

Currently flex schedule watering approx 4 hrs and 2,400 gal. per watering.

Looking to optimize based on best practices of experts here. Thanks!

Great to have you here @Miles267. When you say 7 zones, are those all bermuda grass or are some drips, etc? Also, what soil type did you end up plugging in?

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IThanks for your questions. 6 of my 7 total zones are lawn. All are Bermuda grass. 1 other zone is mulched flower bed mostly with shrubs, not annuals/flowers.

The entire yard is level with very slight slopes in some places. Perhaps too slight to consider them anything less than flat.

I’ve plugged in soil type of Loam and available water of .15 in all zones based on recommendation of others in the forums from my soil survey posting here:

I would probably keep the zones the same slope setting then unless you notice any kind of water running off from one area to another.

Great, then I think you are set with your AW setting. If you want to geek out on soil, then check out mason jar tests. Here’s my own post about it

And here is a support page on it.

What nozzle do you have plugged in for all of your grass zones?

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Please post screenshots of a zones setting, including the advanced.

But at first glance, those gallon number appear fine.

No problem. Here’s one zone. All are similar to this except my single flower bed zone.

@Miles267 Earlier in the thread you said that you used an Available Water setting off 0.15, but that screen she shows 0.07. That discrepancy would certainly have a significant impact.

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You’re correct. Initially, my Available Water was set to 0.15, but at the recommendation of plainsane I have since adjusted to 0.07.

Did he mean 0.17? That would be the AW for loam. That 0.1 would have a large difference

Check out these numbers from Franz

@Modawg2k This is the part I was referring to …

I asked that person to alter based on their soil from the db, it’s a heavy gravel soil. That is just not going to hold water. Unless that soil has been amended with some sort of organic matter, I feel pretty good about that number

OK, I thought I was getting this, but now I’m really confused. The numbers @Modawg2k just posted from Franz make sense to me because that’s what I see in the settings when I look at a zone for AW. But if I’m using the IOS phone app looking at soil types, this is what I see. What are these numbers? All I can think of is that maybe they were the old AW numbers that they were using before they modified the values? or are they something else?

@Linn I can see how that is confusing. Those are the infiltration rates (in./hour) used for deriving a maximum runtime in smart cycle.

:cheers:

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@franz Thanks for clarifying that. I knew that they weren’t AW numbers but I didn’t know that they feed into Cycle Soaking. I have Sandy Loam and with my 0.4 in/hr heads I don’t cycle soak, but I would like to due to the slope of my yard (I’m already on steep). Is it a reasonable tweak to choose Clay Loam but then change my AW to 0.12, which is for Sandy Loam? It seems I should have the same watering duration and frequency but just start to cycle soak. Would there be any other factors affected?

You,can do that, it will not effect anything else besides soak time (if you move awc). I’m surprised that you are getting runoff.

Thanks @plainsane. The zone goes for 1hr 28 minutes. I don’t get a ton, but I do see some runoff at about the 1hr mark.

See if the new soil type helps, else you need to start solving hydrophobic soil.

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