I have had Rachio for awhile now and had flex daily schedule and it scheduled a 16 min duration for each of my 3 zones around 3-4 days per week. I live in humid Tampa, FL and my grass looks very dry during spring/summer months. I changed it to flex monthly to see what happens and now it is scheduled for only 5 minutes every day. I have default zones settings and warm grass with sand soil type. This seems very low water duration for Florida. Before this Rachio I had deep watering (no restrictions for me) for about 30-45 min and that seem better. I don’t understand how 5 min is going to help the deep roots. I think it will kill my St. Augustine grass in front 2 zones. I have Bahia in back zone. I have to always run manual quick runs every week to help out with the dryness.
Well, the default settings are very basic, and probsbly don’t mimic your yard at all. First off, do you have the correct soil set? What type of sprinkler nozzles to do you have? Do you know what their precipitation rate is?
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I’m in Tampa also running flex daily and the times seem short, we’ll see how it goes and adjust as needed.
The questions in the second reply are super important. If the flow rates for the nozzles are off, Rachio could be thinking it’s putting down more water than it actually is, which would cause shorter run times.
When I set my zones up a few years back, the default for rotor head nozzles was 1”/hr. Mine only do .3”/hr. Not sure what the current default value is nowadays.
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