For only being able to water three days a week I think that I have managed to successfully dial in a Flex schedule that works for me. Thanks in part to a lot of community reading and tweaking.
What Helped the most was being able to zero out the moisture control before making changes and patience.
All I can say is keep on tweaking on! 
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Great to hear! Always looking for feedback, good/bad/indifferent 
Same thing here. My city has the 3 day restrictions which has me really watching the lawn with a fixed schedule and monitoring my soil sensor and the moisture graphs on the site. I am tempted to call the city and ask for a variance so I can actually use the product (that they helped to subsidize) to its fullest. I definitely think I would save more water if they removed that restriction as I find that I HAVE to water on those 3 days or risk my lawn being dead by the next allowed day (as opposed to flex doing every 3rd or 4th day as needed). Hopefully cities and water companies will come up with better ways to incentivize water saving other than forcing me to water on days that my lawn doesnât NEED itâŚ
At least I am trying out the Flex on my shrubs, trees, and grapes and so far they are still alive and only watering every 1-2 weeks.
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I tweaked mine so that they get watered every three days.
Very good point, itâs good to skip schedule to save water but on my case, if the thursday schedule is skip, the next one is tuesday, so I have to wait 5 long days. Till now, I canât use delay time and flex schedule base on the restriction of my city. Of course, I can show them I could be more effective on using water regardless I use special feature on Rachio, but the main problem I canât provide good stats to demontrated that. Iâm living in a small city (<8,000 population) and they check if we applicated the rules and itâs completly different compare to my previos big city where you could do what ever you want. If I can have more accurate water using, may be they could be willing to do some test. Sometime they do special action like we are the only city in province of Qubec (âŚlike state in USA) where they provide free bus within the city and to go to the nearest train station about 7km from the city.
Ill clarify: I am watering only on the three days per week that I am allowed to water.
No more no less.
In our town, if you attend a âwater wiserâ class they allow you to forgo the 3 day a week restrictions. The town knows it makes more sense to have an open schedule if you know what you are doing especially with these new controllers like the IRO.
I think it is a good compromise. Most people donât understand or care to understand their system. I was at Home Depot yesterday and was chatting with a fellow who was replacing all his rotary heads with fixed heads because he said they didnât work worth a damn and his lawn was browning out.
That may be true but the surrounding neighbors donât know that and they are the ones that stir the pot. 
LOL It would be nice to have some SMART SIGNS, 
Ha! They actually give you a placard for your window!
I water in the middle of the night. Not many pot stirrers stirring then anyway.
@Flipland, hereâs a graph from a study done that compares watering on restrictions with watering âanytimeâ
I donât have the raw data of this study, but from a high level it reinforces that watering restrictions donât always have the desired results; provided that you were properly watering before hand (which unfortunately isnât the case for most households)
@Hooper, just curious, does this certificate expire?
Emil or Ămile in french, sorry about my long messageâŚ
Itâs very strange, because mostly small and medium cities in the province of Quebec in Canada , have water restriction of 2 days only allowed to irrigate landscaping since many years, so I figure out Itâs base on a logic !. Also what mean Kcp ETo and ETc (Iâm french speaking) to have a better understanding of your graph.
One more thing,
Base on my stats, I cut by 50% of water usage and had 35 skips schedule, so I was happy to told that to my wife and neighbour to justify my investment in Rachio last spring, but my wive told me two days ago, she observed infront the house there are zones that the grass seams dead and just beside those zones, the grass look good. So this morning I took a look and notice the same thing and sound familiar, Black Turfgrass again ! I wonât say the word I said in french.
So I went to the landscaping store to confirmed that and do once again a treatement as I used to kill europeans crafer in last may and kill too black turfgrass (srud control product from Bayerâs, I donât like this product because of the impact on bees decline, They decided to replace the bio stuff we use since 5 years by chemical stuff, you know ⌠big chemical industry have big incentive on the market. So no more bio alternative.
She knows that I have an irrigation system and donât understand why I have this problem. Well I told her, you know the ⌠Two day restriction and I skipped many schedule base on the weather. She told me, why ?
As she said, did you remember, black turfgrass hate water, so irrigate your grass. Oups, Now I point out my problem, the skipped schedule that I wrote this week on your blog that could be a real problem depending of the weather cases and water restirction So this morning, my dream blow out ! And very confused , should I turn it off.
May be, last week I should think when I asked to my two neighbour on the other side of the street, whatâs going on their grass and we were thinking itâs could be black turgrass invasion because within a week, their grass changed radicatly.
Finally, this morning my wife told me a killing sentence, you know your famous system can do decision on weather broadcast but itâs not adapted to water restriction and insect invasion like black turfgrass. Well, may be !
I would say since 3-4 weeks we had a lot of alarm on severe rain and wind in my area and since one week, same alert messages but almost no rain in my area but other had a lot of rain. And presently, big alert message on very strong rain in area about 100km from my house and itâs coming in my direction. Also, itâs very humid and humidex factor is very high, yesterday is was 39c, so around 102f and donât forget we reach -32f in winter time, so very big variation.
So, what should I do. Till then, I will turn off taking care the weather cases. I think, the algorithme may be change when there is water restriction and probability of insect invation, like black turgrass. I donât know if you heard that kind of need. I know , may be I should use flexible shedule but I canât and I donât want to pay infringement fees.
Thankâs for your help