I recently bought a Rachio 3 and have been very happy it. While setting it up I based on my input it suggested watering times of over 7 hours !!. I dialed it back to what I have been doing for years (30 minutes every day). I am beginning to suspect ive done that incorrectly but at the same time I dont know enough about my lawn to input the advanced settings. Is it best for me to just set it to monthly or have it set to a manual schedule ? I dont now how to get the numbers for the advanced setting or figure out what soil type the builder used for my bermuda grass.
@lawnnewb My recommendation is I’d start with your normal schedule but take one (or two at most) zones and put into a flex daily schedule. It’s a complete different way to water. I call it the anti-schedule. Once you’ve created a flex daily schedule with a zone or two, myself or the community, would be glad to help you get it dialed in.
Thanks @franz … so I used some online tools to update the advanced settings for every zone. I first set up the area that each zone covers using an area estimator, I found an earlier email from my HOA that recommended watering to 6 inchs deep , so all zones at 6 and Im in Sugar Land, which is a suburb of Houston and we have typically clay soil, so I set the soil type to clay loam (im still unsure about this). At this point for 2 zones the watering time comes to 88 minutes, if I select all the zones its about 5h 40 or so.
Update: The soil type here is called gumbo, which is very gummy clay
If you have clay soil and cycle and soak enabled, then there is probably a good chance that it is not actually watering for that full time, but rather watering for a little bit, waiting and then watering again after the water has had time to get absorbed in the ground. I have sandy soil and water restrictions so the cycle and soak never actually kicks in for me, but you should be able to see if the time includes soaking times (where the water is off) I think.