I have two ‘edge cases’ in my back lawn. One gets plenty or runoff from the neighbors sump pump outlet, and is constantly wet. Another is close to some underground drain tile, and is constantly drying out.
I have adjusted the dry area to 95% in the schedule, but the area is still drying out. I would like to tweak the schedule by making it water more often. I’d also like less frequent watering in my wet areas. What is the best way to do this?
Presently I’m manually watering the dry area, but this just seems to make the problem worse - Rachio then waters even less frequently since it mistakenly thinks the ground is wet.
The easiest way to change flex frequency (assuming all of your zone characteristics are dialed in) is to modify the crop coefficient of your zones in question.
Here is some documentation.
I’d probably increase it by about 10% and see if that helps.
You can also see if the community will give you some feedback on your current zone characteristics if you post some screenshots. Unfortunately I can’t help with that.
For once i would disagree with @franz. I would adjust the root depth of the dry zone to 3" or 4" with he crop coefficient back to 0.80 to start. This will change the frequency of the watering without changing how much water it gets per week. Your water in this zone is draining away rather than staying 6 to 10 inches in the soil for the shallow roots. You should also change the soil in that dry region to sandy, to better represent the rapid drain affect vs holding moisture.
In my yard I have a very small section of grass (5 ft x 8 ft) that is above drain rock, installed to prevent flooding on my patio, at the base of my yard that I have to keep an eye on. To keep from messing the rest of that zone up, I have to manually water with a hose or occasionally by turning the valve by hand (not via the app) to prevent the database from adjusting things.
For the wet area, I would pull up the grass in sheets or replace and adjust he soil to drain the excess away if it is an issue and small enough.
@Linn He refers to “how much water it puts down per week”. @bug99 is pointing out that the root depth affects both frequency and duration, whereas only the frequency is affected by the crop coefficient.
