With some nervousness, anxiety and excitement, I got my Gen2 installed earlier this afternoon! I had actually bought it back earlier in earlier year but since my system was winterized, I had to wait until now to get it installed.
My old sprinkler system a Rain Bird ESP Modular 7-zone system with a Rain Bird wired rain sensor. The rain sensor had two wires: a red and a black, that were connected to the “SENS” module in the system. On the Rachio, I connected the black wire to “S1” and the red wire to the “SC”. I assume that is the right way to wire up the rain sensor? I also enabled the rain sensor option in the app. Unfortunately I won’t be able to easily get to the rain sensor (it’s connected to the edge of the gutter on the roof!), but there is a 50% change of scattered thunderstorms tomorrow. If it does rain, will the recognize that the sensor is wet and it will postpone or delay any future watering? I did set up a schedule using all the defaults; the only thing I told it was to start at 4 am and to water all zones.
Anyway, here’s hoping that this Rachio will help my grass grow better while saving money on my water bill!
Just a note on this. I also replaced a Rain Bird ESP system with the Rachio. The rain sensor that I used with my Rain Bird was actually a “weather sensor” after speaking with Rachio support I was told that the RB weather sensor actually passed proprietary data back the the RB and could not be used as a rain sensor for the Rachio controller. Not sure if you have the exact same model, but you may want to make sure it is working before relying on it (mine would keep getting rain alerts every couple mins).
My rachio was working great up until last night. Couldn’t get any zones to activate. App is working fine and controller is linked to WiFi. Any ideas why it would stop working? Thanks
I had actually bought it back earlier in earlier year but since my system was winterized, I had to wait until now to get it installed.
