My Rachio 2 doesn’t seem to be watering often enough for the type of weather we are having. It’s been consistently in the 90’s with a few 100’s. The lawn gets watered only every 6 days and it’s showing lots of brown areas. I would like to change a parameter in the setting that would make it water more frequently but I’m not sure what to change. I currently have the zones set to warm season grass, rotary nozzle, loam, lots of sun, and flat. Under the advanced settings I’m set to 500 sq ft area, .17 in/in available water, 9 in root depth, 50% allowed depletion, and 80% efficiency. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
The easiest lever is increasing your zone crop coefficient 5%-15%. This will tell the system that the zone is evaporating faster and needs water more frequently. It will not affect duration. Here is more information on the topic.
That is a great support article! Thanks for sharing. I upped the coefficient by 10% to see if that does the trick. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Just to confirm my understanding, I assume the root depth of 9 in. may also play into this, right? That was a change from the default of 6 in., was that intentional?
I changed the root depth to 9" hoping that it would cause deeper watering (long cycle) and encourage deeper root growth. I’m pretty sure the roots aren’t that deep. Are you thinking that if I put the depth back to 6" it would water more frequently? I assume that it would also shorten the duration of the watering.
You can view the zone soil moisture graph for immediate feedback to see how your change affects the next two weeks of forecasted watering.
Shallower root setting will make it run more frequently. I’d say that 9" is a stretch for anything but the most established (and correctly watered) yard. I’d pull back to 6" for sure.
Are you confident that you have the correct precipitation rate set for your sprinklers? Do you know what make/model you have in your yard?
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Thanks. I changed the depth back to 6". My sprinklers are Hunter Pro-Spray PRS40 for the bodies and a mixture of Hunter 1000 and 2000 Series MP Rotator for the heads. I matched the specs of them to the Rachio app.
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I saw that it immediately showed increased frequency in the schedule. Now I’ll give it a couple of weeks to see if the grass greens up.
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