Reporting/Analytics

I am new to the Iro and I am not seeing any water saved information on the reporting. I have been using the system for over a week now and I am curious, does it take a month or two for the data to be compiled and presented in the reports?
Also, how do I know if I have all the weather station turned on correctly. I do see that today was NOT skipped since station XXX_XXXXX observed 0.0 in and predicted 0.09 in of precipitation and the threshold is 0.25. It did rain a little last night, but I guess not enough to prevent the watering?
Does this mean the amount of rainfall last night or this morning was not enough to adjust my scheduled run times and impact future watering run times? I am guessing the answer is yes.
I do see where the run times in the history are showing run time amount changes. For example, at 5:30 am it started watering the back yard for 20 minutes. At 5:50 AM it stated it watered the back yard for 19 minutes. my last zone was started at 5:50 AM and stated it would water for 10 minutes and the 6:00 AM stop time showed it watered for 10 minutes. So did I save a minute of watering time on this zone and use less water on that part of the lawn?
Curious because I really want to show my wife we are saving money with this purchase and I’d like to see some savings in my wallet with summer coming on. If none of this makes sense, let me know and I will work on providing more information.

Hi @canons900, good evening. Thanks for posting!

Great questions. I’ll do my best to reply answer below:

The reporting feature will require a few skipped schedules from rain to show any saved water usage. For more information, please see our Reporting support article.

As long as you have the Weather Intelligence feature enabled on your watering time(s), the Iro is connected to a weather station. By default, we link to the nearest National Weather Station (NWS), but this can be overridden to use a Personal Weather Station (PWS) via the Advanced Settings. Please note, PWS are not always accurate and you should observe their data collection for a week or two before trusting one to run your sprinklers. We do our best to weed out bad stations, but we cannot catch them all.

Per the rain sensitivity threshold set in the Weather Intelligence feature (.25" by default), the observed + forecasted rain was not enough to meet/exceed said threshold and the watering time was not skipped. Future watering run times do not change with the current scheduling options. However, in our v2.0 release (coming soon!), we’ll be adding FLEX schedules, which will water as needed (pending user imposed restrictions). Each zone will have it’s own “bank account” that will increase with “deposits” (watering events, rainfall, etc) and decrease with “withdrawals” (evaporation, wind, etc). A minimum and maximum budget for each zone will be set and the water level will automatically be kept within this budget given watering rules you set. Think of it as automated watering times with real time, seasonal adjustments on a daily basis.

I’m not quite following your run times. Assuming Zone 1 started at 5:30a for 20 minutes, followed by Zone 2 at 5:50a for 19 minutes, then Zone 3 should start watering at 6:09a and end at 6:19a. However, if Zone 3 was scheduled to start watering at 6a – but couldn’t start until Zone 2 finished, then Zone 3 would be queued up to run as soon as Zone 2 finished…hope that all made sense. Perhaps you could share or email our support team [support@rachio.com] screen shots of your watering time settings and history feed to review in more detail?

We understand! It’s important to be able to justify expenses. I believe after a month or two of using the Iro, you’ll start to see notable savings in your water bill from skipped schedules and/or flex scheduling. Perhaps we could touch base in July and compare your water bills from May and June of 2014 to May and June of 2015?

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions I can help answer.

Best, Emil

@emil Thanks for the amazing answers.

One thing I want to add is that water savings currently only shows ‘schedule skip’ events as @emil said.

We will be able to deduce flex schedule water savings once we capture enough data and determine the best way to interpolate it onto a savings trendline that essentially shows how much you saved by using the flex principle versus a fixed schedule. That is a ways off, but ultimate goal.

Have a great night!

:beers:

Here are three screen grabs showing my schedule and history, what do you think:


Thanks @canons900 for the screenshots. Since you have Weather Intelligence enabled on your watering time, you’ll start to see water savings reports once the schedule is skipped for rain. If you could send me your Rachio username or Iro serial number, I’d be happy to double check your account in detail.

Best, Emil