New owner - A few problems, suggestions or help

I have marked this as “product suggestions” because, from what I can tell, it’s not that I am missing something but rather that the items I am trying to accomplish aren’t options yet. AND SHOULD BE. So, if anything listed CAN be done, please advise me. Otherwise, I think they are easy add-ons.

  1. I set a DAILY FLEX SCHEDULE (for max water savings) - but there should also be a simple way to prevent any watering ever during a small time window - for example, my property happens to be a bus stop. 6:00 AM to 8:30 AM is a bad time to water. No way to prevent that, other than to set my RUN AFTER time to 2:AM so I know it’s way early enough… but I’d rather water closer to morning, but not if the run will put me past 6:AM

  2. There should be a way to set SEASON RUN DATES - effectively to place unit into standy or run mode automagically. Never run prior to Apr 15 or After Oct 1st, for example. I realize if the water is off, it doesn’t matter, but it would be nice to know I can open my lines in March if I have time, but not water until mid April.

  3. And the biggest oversight I have seen so far is GALLONS USED. Clearly I need to tweak because I ran for 8 minutes and it shows 10 gallons… so my zones aren’t set right. And I’ll fix that best I can, but… in addition to cup tests, zone dimensions, and all that… isn’t the BEST way to get preci rate over any given area to be to allow me to enter my meter reading… run a zone for 15 minutes… enter meter reading… run next zone for 15 minutes… etc. You would then know EXACTLY how much water each runtime is putting out. Seems like a simple fix that would tell the system PRECISELY how much actual water is leaving the heads for that given zone.

Thanks for this suggestion. Our next major release of software will support the concept of running before a certain time.

We have this concept but not as simple as I like. Currently the software supports start and end dates but is still year aware. In the future would like to remove the year concept, and like you said focus on seasonality.

This should help your estimated usage get a lot closer, but agreed the ability to input exact usage would be nice.

http://support.rachio.com/article/383-how-we-calculate-water-usage

It seems like knowing accurate usage along with duration and sq. ft, you should be able to back into the nozzle precip rate(?) using the equation in the above article…

Hope this helps.

:cheers:

Hey, thanks for the reply. Here is my question on the formula though… I understand how the formula is working… 500 SF * nozzle rate of 2.0, then divided by 96.25 gets me to 10 gallons… but here is my concern, and where I think most people end up complaining about GALLONS USED. I could have a 500 SF area with 4 heads, and you could have a 500 SF area with the same exact heads, but you may have 8 of them. Or 6. Or 7. Nowhere does it ask how many heads even. So, there is no way to expect this to be accurate. I do appreciate the link regardless… and yes, what I’m going to do is run each zone for 2 minutes (to start), making sure to mark the meter reading before and after each. I can then tweak each zone’s heads individually so that at least the GALLONS USED is correctly reported… but wouldn’t that then screw with the watering times? My concern is, I want to make sure I’m WATERING properly, and currently, I have to assume I am not because after running for 1 minute, it shows 10 gallons used. That CAN’T be even close, can it?

1 Like

Being able to input gallons used per zone off the meter into the app would be an amazing feature. Please incorporate this!

1 Like

And I wanted to reply again because I put some QT into this last night and had a few things to share. But I’m still a little confused as to WHY. I ran each of my zones for 1 minute. I logged METER READING prior to each.

ZONE 1 (Misters): Rachio reported it used 4.15 gallons, I actually used 5.25 (pretty close) but using the formula, I added a new nozzle at a rate of 2.5 (instead of 2.0) and ran the Rachio again for 1 min. It is now much closer to the ACTUAL 5.25 gallons my meter goes up over 1 minute.

I did the same thing for the other 5 zones, as follows:
Z2 - Rachio=15.584, actual was 17.1 - added a rotor head with rate of 1.1
Z3 - Rachio=15.064, actual was 16.1 - used rotor head with rate of 1.1
Z4 - Rachio 14, actual 13, added rotor head at 0.9
Z5 and Z6 were almost dead on.

Here is my question. HOW? Again… I am inputting my AREA (SF) based on the remedial online tool provided (getlotsize.com) in the online documentation. So, it’s close but not exact certainly. And the system still doesn’t know HOW MANY HEADS in each of my zones. So, a major assumption appears to be being made - that the installers 20 years ago also used the same formula AND installed the system quite accurately? Or is some weird math eluding me?

I tried to understand the way they are actually calculating the “usage” but since I’m still having more questions than answers I ended purchasing a flow meter, still on transit. As soon as I installed it I will compare again what’s the “real” usage.

Simple way, would be similar to how my security camera setup is by having what they call “Holiday mode” where you can specifically program it to turn off or put it in stand by anytime you want. More applicable to this is you have could tell it not to run between the hours of 6-7am on certain days.