Wish we could have more schedules than just 16, I had 120 per day on my old crappy PC Control and while don’t need that many it sure would be nice to have options. I have 14 zones on a 16 zone controller and always have to redo schedules to fit in new things and changes to weather… my pots take 4 schedules per day in mid august here in Phoenix AZ so that 1/4 of my schedules… and cycle and soak would work but then you cant water anything else while that does its thing… Why are we limited to 16 schedules on a rachio 3?
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Hey @Jcowles3!
Thanks for the suggestion! 16 schedules was a product decision by the team back in Generation 2 - partially because of memory limitations.
I’m curious to learn more about why you’re using so many schedules, if you’re up for sharing more detail? I saw that you like to change things based on weather changes, but that’s something that Rachio does on it’s own. Could you go into more detail on the 4 schedules per day for your pots?
I would also encourage you to chat with other @Arizona Rachio users on how they create their schedules - maybe some of their tips might help consolidate.
Lo
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Sure… 14 zones
- drips - plants- x2 per day summer 2-4 per week winter
- Trees -trees-3x or 4x per week
- rear yard east -grass- 1x per day grow, 4-8x per day to seed 2x per year
- rear yard west -grass- 1x per day grow, 4-8x per day to seed 2x per year
- citrus bubblers trees- 3-6x per week given AZ temps
- side yard -grass- 1x per day grow, 4-8x per day to seed 2x per year
- pots - flowers- 1-4 times per day, full western sun in AZ @118 deg’s
- front rotor east -grass- 1x per day grow, 4-8x per day to seed 2x per year
- front rotor west -grass- 1x per day grow, 4-8x per day to seed 2x per year
- front west SE edge -grass on berm/hill- 1x per day grow, 4-8x per day to seed 2x per year
- Front west NW edge -grass on berm/hill- 1x per day grow, 4-8x per day to seed 2x per year
- front east SE edge -grass on berm/hill- 1x per day grow, 4-8x per day to seed 2x per year
- front east NW edge -grass on berm/hill- 1x per day grow, 4-8x per day to seed 2x per year
- thought I had but not used
15 not used
16 not used
So over seed in the spring and winter grass in the fall is perfect for cycle and soak but nothing else gets watered while that schedule goes… so I combine many of the grasses and then put pots and drips in with grass watering so my schedule looks like… 6am grass, pots and drips, 9am grasses, 1pm trees and so forth and then when I need to water growing in grass I need to switch the schedule around to cycle and soak with fixed pots, drips and trees firing off in between soaker schedules of cycle and soak schedules for the grass.
My aim would to be not having to have such a labor intensive schedule when I can make each zone its own schedule or schedules that I can engage or disengage. So pots might need 4 watering’s a day in the hot times(4 schedules) but only every other day in the cool months (1 schedule), that make me change name (description), time and duration in the current schedules I have. where if we had more schedule I could simply change duration. Grass grow-in is sim. where i’ll run them all on 3 schedules a day of cycle and soak while allowing other watering needs to go in between those.
My personal issue is simply I had 120 schedules per day on the same zones and loved my ability to open my grow in fall schedule and run just run that with no mod’s to the schedule. I had more flexibility to read my schedule as I didn’t need to push all zones together into hourly water duration descriptive schedules. That being said I ditched that old one for rachio 1 and made due but I thought the cycle and soak on rachio 3 would let other schedule run through and I was not aware of the limit to 16 schedules…
Long and rambling…
Yes, overseeding two Gen 2’s 16’s, sprinklers on 4x a day. Really a pain to program around the restrictions. Phoenix Area, we have special needs, a wide assortment of watering needs.
Well today’s rain make us both happy!
@Jcowles3, I don’t even know what to make of your “schedule” or what you are saying your old controller did vs. what you think Rachuo is lacking…are you wanting to keep overseeing schedules in Rachio and just disable them when not in use?
But, I’d argue that you are not watering very efficiently. Without knowing exactly what your plants consist of, I’ll make some typical AZ assumptions, but no reason to be watering trees 3-4 times a week. Sounds like you water short and frequent, which doesn’t promote deep, healthy, drought tolerant root systems. Same goes for plants to a lesser degree…citrus is similar. It typically likes long deep waterings, but every week or two.
My old controller allowed me to pull up pre-made schedules like “winter lawn” and run and modify as needed… nice but it was a junky controller.
I just put in all new landscape so some of those values are going to be odd as it was installed in August and we wanted to water the crap out of the plants and trees… all back to normal schedule now.
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