This Is How You Need To Water Your Lawn

Flex, Fixed, Manual, OH MY!


Who knew watering your lawn could be so intuitive and, dare we say, fun. We found our community’s favorite ways to water, regardless if you’re looking to save money, conserve water, revive dead grass, or keep your yard looking fresh and healthy.

Have restrictions? Here’s how to maximize a flex schedule with watering restrictions.

Have new seed? - Our community provided some great feedback on watering with new seed. Otherwise, check out our support article for New Seeding Schedule.

Have dead grass? Check out 3 Guaranteed Ways to Improve Your Lawn Care

Want to really nail down those advanced zone settings and water more efficiently? Try acatch cup test or use the web soil survey to define your soil settings. You can also check out @azdavidr’s drip emitter calculator for precipitation rate and area.

Looking to figure out some trickier watering schedules and types? Flex Daily can be nailed down with @azdavidr’s post onWhere To Start On Flex Daily or our Flex Daily Schedules FAQ. Drip can be mastered by reading this thread on running drip schedules in the morning or evening. Worrying about watering in extreme heat? IFTTT + Rachio schedules can help you determine how much to water when the temps get unbearable.

Our users are full of tips and tricks for your watering schedules. Just ask!

can i set up a “flex monthly” that will run a full cycle of my all my 6 grass stations then run again after that ? i basically have my old school toro set to 110% with my station times set and it divides by a factor of 2 and runs twice. i figured this out 18 yrs ago to set up my own soak plan.
basically i want my rachio to run two full cycles at half the water that my zones need. soak time is the time it takes to run twice.

can my rachio emulate this ? how? thanks

TONY

Hey @ynot151! If I’m understanding correctly, you’re going to want to use our Cycle Soak feature :slight_smile:

yes but does this feature figure out which zone to run on the second pass? so first run would be 1-6 in order or does it mix it up where the second pass is integrated sporadically?
1,2,1,3,4,2,5,3 etc. …like this for example?
does zero slope / soil type settings divide run time in half?

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I just planted some seed on one of my lawns (4 zones out of 12). I read your post about “watering with new seed”… Unfortunately, it does not look like it is well thought out. The instructions stop at the step that is broken. As far as i can tell, i can not set the start AND stop time for the seeded section (4 zones). It blocks me with an error about only allowing one start or stop per controller (not zone). In other words, i have removed the 4 zones from every other schedule, but an unable to schedule the seed watering to start at 6am and stop at 6pm, watering every two hours every day. My Flex Daily is scheduled to end by Sunrise, on the other zones, which should have no effect, but i think it prevents seed watering correctly.

This is crazy simple stuff. It should be noted that it also does not matter if the schedules are disabled, it still will not work. The only way i see to make this work is to delete my flex daily for my entire zone set and water everything during the day until the seed is germinated in the 4 zones, then delete all of the schedules again and then set the flex daily back up to end before sunrise again. I do not know if even then i can set both a start and an end time to water every two hours every day. What a pain.

Rachio sets it’s own cycle and soak according to the attributes you input about each zone. Like root depth, soil type, sun or shade, sprinkler type and GPM. Very seldom does every zone water the same day. Depending on which schedule type you use. Flex daily, flex monthly or fixed. If you want what your old school water wasting clock used to do you best just put that old one back on the wall and hook it up.

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