I had my Wireless Flow Meter installed this week. I have been getting frequent high and low flow rate warnings on several zones (not the same zones every time). Also getting random zero flow warnings. I also get different flow rates when I re-run calibration. An example would be my front lawn - the first calibration was 4.7gal/min (way wrong!), and the next calibration immediately following was 17.2gal/min (likely correct). My flow meter signal strength shows Good(-4). I have gone through and re-calibrated all of my zones at close to the time my irrigation schedule would run early morning hoping that would help.
1 Like
@JohnF - there is an option to increase the pressurize and settle times under Controller Settings/Flow Settings. I might bump up the pressurize time a minute or two to see if that helps.
3 Likes
I am having the exact same issues.
I increased the pressurization time to 3 minutes, and still get low-flow warnings on different zones and different flow rates when I run calibration.
@JohnF Would you mind letting me know the variance you are seeing in your calibrations?
Also, what types of zones are you seeing the low-flow warnings on?
Not just low-flow warnings. I am getting low, high and zero warnings.
Here are just a few that I have been receiving. The warnings are across most all of my 12 zones (and zone types). There is really no consistency. I can run a calibration and get 5 gal/min - and run the calibration again and get 14 gal/min. I have tried to run the calibrations multiple times consecutively to get a number that āseemsā reasonable to set as a baseline. Then I find that when the schedule runs at itās normal time a few days later, I get a low or high warning.
9/4 - We detected a flow rate of 7.7 gpm, which is below your set threshold of 9.7 gpm. Without action, Rear Yard will continue to water as scheduled.
9/3 - We detected a flow rate of 8.2 gpm, which is below your set threshold of 8.7 gpm. Without action, Front Shrubs will continue to water as scheduled.
8/31 (Front Yard) - We detected a flow rate of 17.2 gpm, which is above your set threshold of 14.6 gpm
8/31 - We detected a flow rate of 0.0 gpm, which is below your set threshold of 7.4 gpm. Without action, Pool Shrubs will continue to water as scheduled.
8/28 (Front Plants & Shrubs) - We detected a flow rate of 15.7 gpm, which is above your set threshold of 13.8 gpm.
8/27 - We detected a flow rate of 0.0 gpm, which is below your set threshold of 7.6 gpm. Without action, Rear Yard will continue to water as scheduled.
8/27 - We detected a flow rate of 0.0 gpm, which is below your set threshold of 6.0 gpm. Without action, Driveway Shrubs will continue to water as scheduled.
I am having the same issues. New to the system, I just expected āit will workā - hah. From what I have gathered this far, your best bet is to find out what the fluctuation of your system can be w/o having a burst pipe. I mean by that, establish what your system does, for me, it can be low as 1.1 gpm and up to 7.5 gpm. Once established, you can set - under the Advanced tab - the high and low warning amounts, that way you donāt get flooded with notifications and warnings for these day to day fluctuations in pressure and output, but that you only get warnings if it goes abvoe or below your manually set limits. Calibration did not work for me, because several zones fluctuated widely, even if instantly re-calibrated and I even got some ācould not calibrateā messages. Manually setting what seems the upper/lower numbers took care of the many emails and I will just not worry about it further for now. At least I try 
I have opened a support case, and tried the resolution that the support rep suggested, but it made no difference. I guess that my support case is in the hands of the wireless flow team now. I may increase the high/low notification thresholds to try and eliminate all the warnings that I need to go into the app and clear out daily. Unfortunately, changing the thresholds wonāt help with the random zero flow warnings.
I have same issues - seemed to be tied to updates to the rachio controller. First started getting flow warnings outside of scheduled runs. Then on 9/5 it changed to āno flowā warnings.
Same issue here. Would love an API call to be able to directly retrieve the event historyā¦ hereās my best shot at analysis. Visually I havenāt yet been able to find any broken or underperforming sprinkler heads but am most certainly not an expert at this stuff!
Because the āFront Yard Grass-ā¦ā leak detections descriptions arenāt specific enough to the zone (the ā-ā¦ā is cutting off which actual zone is the supposedly problematic one), letās filter the above list based on where we do have precision:
Will be renaming āFront Yard Grass- Right Frontā to āFront Right Frontā and āFront Yard Grass- Right Backā to āFront Right Backā to get better reporting.
Got a āFront Right Backā high-flow alert today- flow rate of 4.5gpm which is above threshold of 1.8gpm.
Also got a āBack Yard Patioā high-flow alert today- flow rate of 4.8gpm which is above threshold of 3.8gpm.
I checked the sprinkler heads and didnāt see anything obviously wrong.
Thinking I may just need to re-calibrate these zones? But Iāve already done thisā¦?
- John
The fluctuations in readings from your flow meter could point to turbulent flow in your system. Could you post a photo of your flow meter installation so we can see if anything stands out as odd?
1 Like
For now, I have just opened up my thresholds to try and minimize the number of warnings I receive from the flow meter. On one of my zones, I have received warnings for low flow of 8.5 gal/min and high flow of 17.2 gal/min. My flow is definitely not varying over that range. I also receive zero-flow warnings across different zones. Unfortunately, the flow meter is not a trusted measure of my irrigation water consumption/flow at this point. I have had a support case open for about a month, but havenāt heard anything back in 3 weeks or so. Iām hopeful that Rachio can sort through these issues.
@john.mg It looks like there might be an issue with your installation. You are required to have at least 6 inches of straight 1" pipe between the upstream shark-bite coupler and the flow meter. The shark-bite coupler is likely causing turbulence in the flow of water, which is why youāre seeing sporadic readings.
I canāt quite tell what material your supply line is made of, but it looks like a 3/4" line. Feel free to check out our 3/4" installation guide for guidance on how to fix your installation 
2 Likes
