Swapped a hunter pro c to a v3 today, zones setup, available water checked., . 21 per the web page.
Located in Minnesota, 6 zones, all on the grass,. 2 zones get blasted with sun, and are a tic prone to browning on the edges. Diving in head firts, is the daily flex the best choice or a good choice vs fixed??
Willing to learn, tweak, and do what I need. Just trying to make it out of the gate with this thing. Lol.
I see the fixed schedule with all options checked is similar to my old unit, the daily looks about double for water length of time. I’m ok with this being smarter than my old box and me, but if fixed is a better optikn for odd/even, im ok with that too. It will be nice not having to manually bump my percentage button up or down based on brown, or jungle green grass. Lol
Thanks much for the time
Joel
@JS_racer - I think the recommendation is to start out on Fixed except for one or two zones and put those zones on Flex Daily. Once those zones are dialed in, then the other zones can be moved over to Flex.
well, my first watering was all 6 on the flex daily, that was last night.
i do have a fixed schedule, that is disabled. (i played with it to see what times it suggested)
What zones or what is the thought behind 1` or 2 zones for the daily to start ?? brown, too much water ?? different strategy for watering ??
feel like i’ve been reading till my eyes hurt, but still confused. if fixed is good, is it not worth trying the daily flex ?? just set all the fixed options and let it go ??
Learning how to set up Flex Daily correctly. There are a lot of advanced features with Flex Daily that need to be set up correctly for it to work it’s magic. If you happen to have settings off, at least it is only 1 or 2 zones, not your whole yard.
Key things are to make sure you have soil right, nozzle PR right, as those two seem to be the biggest struggle for people. Also, depending on how you watered (frequency and duration) with your old dumb clock, you might need to re-train your grass/trees/shrubs over the course of a few months to go deeper for water, as that is how Rachio waters (the correct way, long duration, infrequently).
soil is right… at .21 per the government page, interactive site
nozzles are chosen correct, but PR might need fine tuning, (need to read up on that)
sides and rear, so 4 of the 6 zones are not as important, both front seem to need more attention due to all the sun. heck the sides i could probably quit watering, the neighbors shoot enough for both of us,
all 6 zones are the same cool grass, 2 zones sprayers, 4 rotor zones.
old was every other, front overnight (20m?), then again 9pm (20m?) same day, sides and rear just the overnight, if it browned a tic around the edges i bumped the percent up down once, so thats up 10% on the controller.
long infrequent seems to be flex daily, fixed was every other much shorter .
i could set it on fixed, and be done, not sure what would happen with 1 zone in daily, dry up or too much water ??
thinking since all my zones are the same grass, 2 types of sprayers, soil the same, just elevation and sun, yard is like 5k sqft, seems like a good experiment just having them on daily odd from the start ?? or should i toss them on the fixed, and be done with it ?? since the season is getting going i would rather run and jump in, than watch 1 zone, then what happens after the 1, add another and putz with that 1 ??
Thanks so very much for your time, trying hard to learn here.
Finding the nozzle PR of both the spray and rotor zones is going to be key. If you can find the manufacturer make and model, you can usually find the precipitation rates (in/hr) on their websites.
After that, you sound like you have everything else fairly well set. Only think I would check is root depth depending on how established the lawn is, and how frequently you had been watering. Frequent waterings keep the roots close to the surface, so you might want to kick the root depth up a bit from the default.
Excellent, thanks so very much
I have the hunter heads, green or red band sprayers, most at 180 degrees, not sure pressure,( I know house pressure from my ro system on the same manifold.)
Rotors are hunter ss but not sure, I think the nozzles are colored if I’m not mistaken. I’ll see what I can find.
The Kentucky bluegrass is over 10 years old, but if watering every other day except with a rain sensor, they might be a bit shorter roots, and we have had voles out back in the past.
I think it’s at 6 inches, but could slide a bit up, say 4 inches to get things going, then adjust in the future months, or seasons,
Thanks so much again for your time and help,
Try to match up the nozzles, and you can find your PR.
Right or left (nevermind the actual colors)?
Left is an adjustable spray nozzle, meaning you can take it from 0-360 degree spray pattern. The right is a fixed spray, meaning you can’t adjust it to fan wider or more narrow.
Then you can look up the specs on these nozzles (this chart happens to be the left nozzle picture, color represents the distance of spray). Typically, since you usually have a combo of 90’s, 180’s etc, I try to find the average, and plug that into the “Inches per Hour” field in Rachio.
Same for the rotors…and yes, you are correct, the color of the nozzles inside the rotor head usual tell you the distance of spray.
Thank you!!
Left, adjustable, (not sure the rating of square vs triangle, might be a tic slow today, lol) the app set the sprayer at 1.5 inches per, so it will be interesting to see how it compares. (application set 1 inch on the rotors)
I’ll do some looking on my rotors to see the color also.
Thanks again!!
This is referring to how the sprinklers are arranged in your yard. Think of a sprinkler at each point. Which layout best models your yard?
umm, where the sprayers are on one side, they are in a line, along the property line, all 180 degree
the sprayers on the other side, some in a line, some on the blvd in line, some by the driveway facing each other. sooooooo square ?? lol
seeing pressure doesn’t make much difference, i’ll get a count of exactly how many of what color, should help get in the ballpark much closer. pretty big difference between the 8 and 10 , found the full web page, looking at it now.
I feel like this is making sense, thanks so much for all your time
Count doesn’t matter. 1 sprinkler or 100, the PR is still going to be the same.
As for the layout…I’d error on the side of lower PR for now. Down the road, you can adjust according to how the zone looks, or better yet, do a catch cup test!
side is 5 red 1 green in a row, so that should be easy… 1.93 (dark green,)
other is a mix of stuff, brown, green, red, but looks about the same, so i’ll set it 1.93 also
so these went from 1.50 to 1.93, for the daily advanced.
Ahh…I see what you meant by count. Do you think that zone really needs a mixture of radii? Could you swap the green (short 4’ radius) for a red (much wider 10’), or vise versa? Reason I ask is that the PR of each of those is VASTLY different…
dark green,
the other side red on the hill, green by the driveway, brown by the street, but the street looks toned down, might have to check the screens, or something, 1 was quite plugged i found earlier,
i’ll do the red and green average like 1.93 or so, see where that gets me.
rotors next, lol. i think they put numbers on the caps too, but i’ll see.
thanks so much for holding my hand and walking me through this, learning a ton, not tough, just new. so thanks, this will be cool dialed in.
Perfect…then not as bad.
^^^ updated 
well, thought i was slick, checked all rotor heads, blue, thought sweet!!! that was easy, came back in and looked here
blue has like 8 choices, uggggg, lol well now how do i check, lol looks like most are .35-.65 far cry from the standard 1.0 entered in the daily, not sure if i toss in a placeholder of say 0.60 to change it from the 1.0 , might be a good start,
Rear all look similar flow, (as I was checking colors, lol) 1 zone 2/4 are 360, the front has 1 stronger more flow, so it’s clear others are less.
Have to research how to see if the nozzle is marked, would have to be, I would think, just takes more effort, but defiantly worth it
Well…you might have to physically check a couple of similar arcs to see what they have. Rotors nozzles can vary since they have only one point of watering, and a 90 will go thru its motion way faster than a 180 or 360, and if it had the same nozzle, would put down way more water…
This video does a good job explaining it…
thanks so much, looks like there is stamping on the nozzle itself, so i’ll capture one and shut the zone off, then use my old eyes, and a picture or magnifying app, or my wife’s good eyes, and see if i cant se some average numbers, my system seems fairly standard, so guessing most will be the same, but i’ll check several from the zones to see.
my wife was out of town, got back yesterday, she was impressed with my handiwork so far with this, i told her i definitely had help!!