Water times take all day

i have 5 zones on my rachio, with 2 drip and 3 lawn. i use flex schedule and today it ran drip 1 for 2 hours, drip 2 for 2 hours, and then lawn. the problem is the lawn started at 10am. is it possible to not run lawn after drip and do it another day?

You could set specific days for each group of zones, but I wouldn’t personally do that. Do you want all your watering to be done by a specific time in the morning? Or is your concern with just the grass being done by a certain time?

typically the flex schedule seems to not overlap drip and lawn. i set the flex to start at 4am, and typically either drip or lawn are both done in a few hours, at least by 8am. today it seems they stacked and ran on past 10am.

I don’t think there is a way to do this without implemented restrictions on the days to water. Another option would be to move some of the watering to the evening, after sunset. Or bump up your start time to midnight. That’s what I do, I start all my lawn watering at Midnight so that all of my drip zones are done by 9 a.m. at the latest if they happen to stack. I’ve heard there could be issues with fungus if you water at night but I’ve never experienced those issues.

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I think YMMV in regards to the fungus issues. Everything I read is that it’s bad to water grass in the evening or middle of the night, but I’m sure different lawns in different parts of the country will be more prone to issue. @Isriam I recommend keeping it to where your grass starts watering at sunrise. Have your drips start at different times, whether very early in the morning or after your grass. For example, currently I have my grass start at 6:00 am and my drip schedules start at 6:01am. That way, on days when a drip and the grass runs together, the grass will take priority and the drip will run aftewards. The Rachio will never run two zones together so they will always stack on eachother

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sounds good, thanks, i’ll try that. i created 2 flex schedules, one for drip and one for lawn, and made lawn start at 4am and drip at 4.01am.

perfect, yeah i meant to say earlier to have different schedules, not zones. It’s recommended to do what you did, have a zone for each different type of plant (i.e. grass vs shrub).

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You should try to keep drip and lawn on separate schedules anyway. If you have them on the same schedule, smart cycle will not function. If you have standard spray nozzles, I highly recommend using smart cycle for the lawns.

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thank you, i did not know that. that explains why its never worked for me.

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I’d also recommend this as an easy fix if you live in an area with little humidity. Fungus becomes an issue in areas with humidity.

Another easy fix is to simply change the order of your orders within the schedule. IF all of your zones need to water on the same day, you can prioritize the turf/lawn zones to run first. For details on how to do this, please see #4 in this support article.

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